


American Spirits

by werewolfsquad



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Arthur Morgan Lives, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Full Game Spoilers, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shapeshifter Arthur Morgan, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spoilers, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23529106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werewolfsquad/pseuds/werewolfsquad
Summary: There was a rumor that Dutch van der Linde sold his soul at a crossroad in exchange for the shapechanging beasts that followed at his beck and call. Frankly, Arthur didn’t buy it. He followed Dutch and Hosea because they fed him. Some deal with a devil had nothing to do with it.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Hosea Matthews & Arthur Morgan, John Marston & Arthur Morgan, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 168
Kudos: 423





	1. Colter

“Does it hurt?”

The question from Charles comes as Arthur’s pulling on his coat, and, despite the fact that doing so in the middle of the snowy landscape (as they currently are) is a very bad idea, he pauses in the middle of redressing. Asks, “The—the changin’ thing?”

It’s been years, and still Arthur has no idea how to say it. His father called them _pwca_ , descendants of shapechanging spirits. Men and women who could take the forms of beasts, something touched with fae magic, the kin of myths.

As for the law, it calls them monsters. Arthur tends to settle somewhere in the middle.

Charles sits back on Taima’s saddle. “Yes,” he says, and then, “I mean when you rearrange your entire body.” Arthur doesn’t know Charles well, not when they’ve only had half a year running together, but it sounds nearly sarcastic.

“Nah,” Arthur says. “Strange feelin’, sure, but you get used to it.”

“It isn’t pleasant to look at,” Charles replies, and the laugh that bubbles up in Arthur’s throat is something he can’t control.

“You’re tellin’ me,” he shoots back, and works already cold fingers over the buttons of his coat.

* * *

Even with fur, Colter is miserable. If there were ever a time to feel lucky about what he is, Arthur figures it’s when he can curl up in front of the fire when the rest of the gang are shivering even through layers of coats.

Hosea is pretty sure John isn’t dying, not when the wounds are wolfpack caused, threatened by his smell, and the bullet from Blackwater had been a normal round, not silver. Still, Arthur can hardly stand to be in the same room as him, the smell of infected wounds heavy on the air. As angry as he still may be at John, there was something comforting about not being the only animal in the room, in feeling another wolf lay next to him in front of the fire, even if Arthur would snap at him if he got too close.

But Arthur had just pulled John off a mountain, sick and half-frozen, and the werewolf parts of him are buried deep under layers of pain and fever. What they’ll do when the full moon comes, Arthur has no idea, but he’s sure he’ll be stuck with it, either the event or the aftermath.

It’s cold, and miserable, and those who aren’t injured from Blackwater are sick, and those that aren’t sick are grieving, and Arthur had been near stir-crazy enough to lose his mind. So, when Pearson pressed him to hunt and Charles offered to accompany him, he acquiesced with minimal fuss.

* * *

Arthur likes Charles because Charles doesn’t have an issue with silence.

They’re running low on feed for the horses and so, before they can make a trip out to the Adler ranch to see what hay might remain, it makes sense for Arthur to carry his own weight. The shape of a short, drafty pony he’d picked up about a decade back works well enough to move out into the wilderness and haul deer carcasses back, large hooves cutting fine through the snow.

Arthur can’t rightly move vocal cords that aren’t there, and so things had been quiet on their ride out. A few murmured directions, Charles alerting Arthur to some sign in the landscape before wheeling Taima the right way. If he were a wolf, Arthur would’ve been able to help, but his nose isn’t built to assess trails as a pony, not when the most important things in a horse’s brain are the threats around it.

And, so, when Charles speaks, it still feels unusually bright in Arthur’s ears, a warm sort of thrum. He’s just managed to button the last clasp on his coat when Charles passes him a bow.

In lieu of taking the weapon, Arthur gives Charles a look. “Ain’t sure what you expect me t’do with that.” It comes out too harsh, too standoffish, and yet Arthur can’t help that part of him that bristles involuntarily.

Luckily, Charles seems to take it in stride. He gestures with the bow again, until finally Arthur closes his fingers over the polished wood. “Use a rifle, and you scare off game for miles. Isn’t like I can use it right now, and we need this food.”

The off-white bandage on Charles’s hand stands stark against his skin, and Arthur huffs a sigh.

They _do_ need food, is the thing. Arthur can go without, but they got a kid, injured, sick, all folks that need to keep eating if they need to stay alive. Problem is, Hosea’d always used rifles, and it was Hosea that taught him to hunt. “Hope you ain’t expectin’ any sorta skill or nothin’.”

“Never,” Charles replies, but there’s a touch of humor in his voice. He’s dismounted Taima now, letting the appaloosa stand with her reins knotted up so they don’t slip and trip up her hooves. He’s examining the snow, the wind drifted mounds that lie heavy this time of year.

They haven’t talked much, Arthur and Charles. Arthur, like Charles, doesn’t have an issue with silence, but it means he knows little about his hunting companion. What he does know would fill less than a page in his journal: Charles is part Native, part black. He is a skilled robber, and an even stronger huntsman. He is kind to the women, to the animals, to Jack, but tolerates no disrespect from the likes of men like Micah or Bill. They need Charles, that Arthur knows. Folks strong in the way Charles is are a rare find, someone who can be an outlaw without being swallowed by the violence and disregard for others that would make one just a plain criminal.

Arthur also knows Charles doesn’t recoil at things civilized folk would call unnatural, and that’s something. Sure, most folk wouldn’t balk at the small spells used around camp, seeing as they’re just as much as the standard hedgewitch would have in her pocket, but those were a far cry from seeing a man transform into a beast, as both Arthur and John had cause to do.

It’s enough to make a person wonder, especially with as little as Arthur knows about Charles. He finds himself asking, almost unconsciously as his eyes follow Charles’s careful movements through the snow, “You been touched by magic, Charles?”

Charles turns to look up at him, and Arthur almost feels pinned under the weight of his eyes. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, not when Charles’s brown eyes are warm, but he still feels himself still, stiff-limbed until Charles shrugs, turns away, says, “No, not so much as anyone else has.” A pause, and then, “My mother, her tribe, they had some, but it was mostly gone by the time I was born.” And then his eyes are back on Arthur as he asks, “Some reason you want to know?”

Arthur rolls his shoulders, can’t help dropping his gaze away. “Seems most of us have, some way or another. Dutch has a nose for it. ‘sides,” Arthur gestured to the way Charles seemed to be following a nonexistent trail, “ain’t never seen no one what can track like this.”

* * *

There are only two men who can change their shape in the Van der Linde gang, but plenty more have magic somewhere within them to varying degrees. Micah Bell doesn’t need bullets to fire his gun, Sean MacGuire always seems to narrowly avoid death through luck alone, Tilly Jackson made a name for herself in her previous gang for the way she was able to get into near any room, Karen Jones always manages to make marks fall for her, and all among so many others. Not everyone in the gang has something unnatural about them, but Arthur would be more than willing to bet that they have one of the highest concentrations of the unusual outside of covens and other regulated communities.

And there are the rumors, larger in scope than they could ever hope to embody. The law, the papers don’t know just how much of the unnatural they possess. That, the Irish, black, Native, Mexican folks in the gang’s makeup, all make them seem more dangerous to civilization than the plain old outlaws they are. Larger than life. And that isn’t even getting to Dutch himself.

The blood inside of Arthur is his father’s. Some Welsh line, carried by his grandfather into the new world. A thing to be proud of, according to Arthur’s father, but the man only seemed to use it for robbing folks blind as long as Arthur had known him.

Arthur watched his father die.

It isn’t a sad memory, per say. Lyle Morgan was one of the worst men Arthur had known, and, even now, he’s glad to be rid of him, to have grown up in the care of Dutch and Hosea. Still, even up to his twenties, he was woken with nightmares of how it happened, the barking of dogs, the snapping of bullets. He’d managed to slip away, invisible in the way children often are, without the men realizing he was the whelp of the man they were hunting, but not before he heard the bubbling, bloody noises of his father dying, watched his torn throat bleeding out into the dirt.

Civilization isn’t kind to the unnatural. Arthur knows that to his core.

* * *

Arthur is clumsy with the bow, but he manages to take down two does with minimal fuss. It’s not graceful, but at least his aim is true once he figures out just how much pressure to put on the drawstring. The does don’t suffer, one arrow for each, and that’s about as much as Arthur can ask to be true.

He’s carefully pulling the arrows from the second doe’s hide to store back in Charles’s quiver when the man says, quietly, “Surprised you use guns to hunt, anyway.”

It’s not a particularly funny statement, and yet Arthur snorts under his breath, tilts his head. So many of his habits feel ingrained, and maybe it’s no surprise they stand out to someone unfamiliar to the way things go. “Ain’t got much beyond a wolf that might be able to take down a doe, and wolves are pack animals besides. Maybe if John was here, but, even then, we’d need somethin’ weaker n’what could feel all ‘em folks if we wanted t’stand a chance at takin’ it down.”

That, and it was a particularly brutal thing to bring down a deer with teeth only. Arthur would rather end an animal’s suffering with a quick bullet than allow them the panic of being stalked, worn down by fear and snapping jaws. Better to save that sort of thing for men, who often deserve it.

Arthur shoves that line of thought away, rolls his shoulders. Says, lightly, “‘sides, too many folks complain about spit in their food and y’start learning how to shoot a rifle.”

Charles gives a little hum at that, and Arthur expects him to leave it there. But, instead, he glances away, tapping the arrow Arthur has handed him against one gloved palm. Says, with care, “I heard stories, when I was young. Men and women who could change their shape at will. My mother’s tribe called it a gift, thought folks like that were something to be celebrated, though they were a rarity. That’s why—that’s why, I suppose. Why this isn’t strange.”

Arthur doesn’t need the explanation. Doesn’t need to know why Charles settled in with their merry little band of strangeness, not when so many folks have their own reasons. Still, there’s something in Arthur’s chest, some hard feeling that comes with what he is, what he has, being considered a gift.

But then, quietly, almost like a side thought Charles wasn’t expecting to spill out of his mouth, “I always figured they wouldn’t eat meat.”

Arthur huffs a breath, a sound he tries to make into a laugh, except the weight of it makes it stick in his chest.

Most of Arthur’s forms are carnivores. This was not a conscious decision, but one that fits Arthur all the same. Dogs, wolves, even cougars, all easier to pull a con with than a stag or a boar. Maybe if some of Arthur’s forms had interesting colors, the kind of pelt that would lure men out with the temptation of slaying, but most of them are drab enough to be average.

That, and it’s safer. Too many men with guns roam the woods. It’s not like a stag couldn’t put up a fight, of course, but with so many men intimately familiar with how to kill a deer, it’s safer to take the form of something with teeth, something that can shred flesh.

Maybe it’s fitting, though. He is, after all, a monster.

Arthur runs a gloved hand over the dead doe’s pelt, mulling it over. When the answer comes, his voice is quiet.

“Ain’t no better than the wolves, Charles. Ain’t sure why I should pretend to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to post this when I'd had the whole thing written but, seeing the state the world is in right now, I figured folks (myself included) might need a little distraction. This AU has been kicking around in my head for a while, so I'm glad to finally share it with y'all. It was about time I wrote a Charthur fic too, seeing as it was the first ship I had playing the game. That said, though, I consider the platonic "&" relationships tagged just as important as Arthur/Charles, so they'll all likely have a semi-equal balance in the fic overall.


	2. Horseshoe Overlook

When he was young, Arthur favored the form of a dog.

Dogs were easy. Could slip places even a child might not, and if he were kicked once or twice, so be it. Back then, Arthur’d take a busted rib over starving any day of the week, and folks tended to look kinder on a gangly mutt than a ragged teenager.

More specifically, a coonhound. He’d learnt it from a dog that used to play around their house, back when his father was alive. A scrappy stray, a hunting prospect ruined by some animal biting back. Or, at least, Arthur guessed that was what it was, judging by the scars on the dog’s back leg. And it was the fact that it was a coonhound that saved him.

It wasn’t the last time Arthur would step in a steel jaw foothold trap, but it was certainly the one he’d remember most. He’d been skulking around in the forest for a few days, far enough away from town that the shopkeeper that had threatened to shoot him if he saw him again wouldn’t stumble across him and make good on the promise. There’d been some vague idea in the back of his head that he might try his hand at learning to find food in the forest. Hunting, or even foraging or something.

A fat lot of shit that turned out to be. There was a deep-set ache of hunger in his belly when the trap snapped shut on his leg.

It was luck and luck only that the trap had been designed for coyotes and foxes. If it had been a bear trap, Arthur would’ve lost his leg—or, really, his arm, once he came back to something human. As was, the teeth dug through his fur and skin and buried in his flesh and Arthur yelped. Tried to pull his paw free, and the resulting pain lanced through his entire leg.

It hurt. It hurt like nothing else in the world hurt. A constant ache, and Arthur couldn’t even move for fear of it hurting worse. He understood now the stories about animals chewing off their own feet to free themselves from traps. It wasn’t just the pain, no, but the confinement, the idea that he was trapped—bleeding enough that everything in the forest could probably smell it, and he couldn’t goddamn move.

That was bad enough. And then something moved in the brush, and in a rush of fear, Arthur flattened himself down to the ground as far as his gangly legs would let him.

He’d been expecting an animal. Some wolf, drawn in by the smell of him, ready for an easy meal. But it wasn’t animal—or, at least, no more than a man might be an animal. A blonde man, tall, dressed simply but cleanly, with a straight back and clean fingernails. A rifle slung over one shoulder. Eyes that widened at the sight of Arthur.

A low growl started in Arthur’s throat, something more instinctual than anything else, all fear and pain wrapped up in one. With luck, it would scare the man off, leave Arthur alone to chew himself free.

But the man didn’t leave. Instead, he shrugged the rifle off his shoulder, saying, “Easy, easy, boy.” The surprise had left his face, his eyes careful and thoughtful as he laid the gun down, took a step closer to Arthur. His voice was low when he continued, “I don’t wanna hurt you, alright? Just wanna get that thing off your foot.”

Arthur didn’t trust humans. His father had taught him that, taught him to growl and snap, force distance on a world that wanted so badly to harm folks like them. Still, when the man crouched, reached toward the trap, Arthur flattened further, ramped his growl up a notch and showed his teeth, but didn’t lunge, didn’t bite. Just watched, wary, as the man examined where the teeth bit into Arthur’s flesh.

“Ol’ thing really got you good, huh? Could never stand these things, seemed too cruel, even for me. Oughta give things a fightin’ chance, right?”

Arthur’s ears perked involuntarily at the man’s tone, the amusement hidden in the calmness of his voice. It didn’t match the strength in the man’s grasp when he grabbed each side of the steel jaw, wrenched the thing open in one smooth motion.

Arthur tried to flee as soon as he was freed, but his leg betrayed him, crumpling under him as he put weight on it. A momentary stumble, except the man was quick on the draw and had Arthur around the belly in the blink of an eye, and then Arthur’s paws lost traction on the ground as the man lifted him up.

Arthur was growling again, twisting, trying to nip at the man’s hands, but it was no use. The man had experience, it seemed, with handing animals, because he had positioned his hands out of reach, and didn’t seem phased at the squirming adolescent coonhound in his arms. Instead, the man’s voice was calm, soothing still when he said, “Easy, boy, easy. Don’t think you’re goin’ anywhere on that leg now, not until it’s patched up.”

Arthur growled louder at the man. It didn’t make a difference.

* * *

“Never thought we’d keep you this long,” Hosea says.

Arthur glances across the fire, Hosea’s face wavering in the dim light the flames give off. “I ain’t that easy to get rid of,” he replies.

He’d agreed near immediately when Hosea proposed they track down a bear, one that’s somewhat of a legend around these parts. Camp is camp, of course, and as much as Arthur loves it, it can become stifling, especially with the ever-present pressure that hangs over them after the Blackwater mess. And, besides, as much as he can never say no to Dutch, he doesn’t want to say no to Hosea.

He gets that look from Hosea, the one of fond exasperation Arthur so commonly finds himself on the receiving end of. But this time there’s something else, something in the set of his chin, that Arthur finds himself turning wary at.

It’s a moment before Hosea speaks, says, “Tell me somethin’, Arthur. You ever thought ‘bout gettin’ out?”

“Me?” Arthur asks, and it’s an easy answer. “Nah, never.”

There are practical reasons, of course. In the gang it’s safer, shelter in the safety of folks who know what he is, the animals that lurk under his skin. More than that, though, the gang is his family, folks he would die for, and the gang has a code. He isn’t John Marston, willing to cut and run when life becomes too hard. There are too many debts, too many folks he owes his life to for both what they’ve done and the people they are. Abandoning them would never feel right.

But Hosea doesn’t seem comforted by his answer. He isn’t looking at Arthur, instead looking steady into the flames. He’d refused dinner, a rabbit Arthur caught just to prove he still could, and now, with the flames making the hollows in Hosea’s cheekbones stand out, something rolls in Arthur stomach.

“When we get enough money, there’s a chance for somethin’ new. For all of us. We could start again, Arthur.” And there’s that look again, the one that seems to cut through him.

“Sure,” Arthur says, but doesn’t mean it, and by the way Hosea takes a breath, turns away, Arthur thinks Hosea knows it too.

* * *

The blonde man collared Arthur and tied him to a tree.

He’d brought Arthur to a camp, a scattered group of tents in a clearing set away from any major foot traffic. He’d cleaned and bound Arthur’s wounded leg, sure, given Arthur some water, and maybe Arthur would be grateful for that, except for the fact that he then wrapped a belt of leather around Arthur’s neck, held Arthur fast with rope. And it wasn’t like Arthur could even chew himself free, because the man settled down with a book on a log not even a stone’s throw from the tree, eyes drifting up to check on Arthur every once and a while.

Arthur settled for curling up at the base of the tree, one eye always on the man and his book, to wait until he could slip away. Couldn’t let himself doze, couldn’t let his guard down. Humans couldn’t be trusted, after all.

It wasn’t long until hoofbeats sounded and Arthur raised his head, resting wary eyes on the entrance to camp as a big black horse came trotting in.

The man who dismounted from the horse’s back was clean, polished, black hair pomaded back away from his face. The look of his clothes, put together in a relaxed sort of way, didn’t match the man’s atmosphere, the bright look in his eyes when he said, excitedly, “Hosea! I think I’ve found us—what is _that_?”

The blonde man, Hosea, by Arthur’s guess, snapped the book shut, and stood. Only after he’d stretched did he say, “A dog, Dutch. A coonhound, by the looks of him.”

Dutch gave Hosea a look back, one equal parts exasperated and confused. “You know what I meant. Why’s there a goddamn dog in our camp?”

“Found him in a fox trap couple’a miles out. Caught him ‘round the leg.”

“And it’s here because…?” Dutch hadn’t looked beyond a glance at Arthur, eyes still lowered on the man across the clearing form him.

Hosea sighed. “He ain’t hurt that bad, Dutch, and he’s young. Train him up, and he could be a fine huntin’ dog.”

Dutch snorted at that. “Sure, Hosea, because you’re gonna make money huntin’ out in the woods.”

“So we sell him then!” Hosea said, gesturing with his hands as he approached Dutch. “But I ain’t gonna leave a healthy dog in a fox trap.”

Another glance at Arthur. “’Healthy’ ain’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it.”

“Aren’t you the one always talking about caring and all that?”

The man with the black hair sighed, then turned his eyes on Arthur. And Arthur had to resist the urge to flinch backwards, the man’s gaze, dark-eyed and sharp, resting on Arthur like he could see straight through him. He stayed firm, but only barely.

He did growl, however, one that got louder when the man crouched, held out a hand towards him, and only ceased when the man pulled his hand back, straightened. “If you can sell that thing, Hosea, then you’re a better conman than I give you credit for.”

“He’s just scared,” Hosea said, rolling his shoulders. “My father had a dog once get hurt, and pain turns them nasty. Once he heals up and realizes we’re the source of his food, it’ll be like we have a different animal entirely.”

“If you say so,” Dutch said, finally pulling his gaze from Arthur, his attention, apparently, done with the insignificant dog tied to the tree. “Now, let me tell you what I found out in town.”

Arthur waited until evening, when the strange pair had eaten and then retreated to their respective tents. It was easy, once he’d come back to human, to unbuckle the collar, leave it lying in the dirt where it belonged.

And Arthur was going to leave, sure, slip away into the woods and leave the men wondering what had happened, how the dog they’d thought was just a dog had managed to free itself. That would have been the smart thing, sure. But he’d smelled food, had seen the guns hanging holstered in the men’s belts as they sat by the fire.

And what could he do with a good meal in his belly, with a weapon in his palm?

He crept, slowly, over to the closest of the two tents, where the dark-haired man, Dutch, he reminded himself, had retreated into. His arm stung, the bandages Hosea had dressed him with running loose and unraveling with his change in form, and so he tucked it close to his body as he crouched low outside of the tent.

The man’s lantern was lit, but the tent flaps were pulled slightly open, letting light spill onto the dirt outside. It was enough for Arthur to see that the man’s back was to the tent entrance, the man himself engrossed in a book, and enough for Arthur to slip inside without disturbing the canvas.

They were far out enough, it seemed, for the man to be relaxed with his weapons. His gunbelt lay on the wooden table next to him, seemingly abandoned. Arthur had gone years learning to be silent, to move bare feet soundlessly over dirt. He slipped up to the table, closed his fingers around the cold metal of the revolver, and started to slide it free.

He almost had it, almost was armed and free, able to slip away as intended. And then the revolver caught on the leather of the holster and the metal buckle on the belt clinked, and then the man was turning.

Arthur snatched up the gun. His father hadn’t used guns much, hadn’t needed them, but Arthur had always had a habit of observing. He knew how guns worked, had seen enough men pull back the hammer, pull the trigger.

And so, he leveled the gun at Dutch’s head as the man turned to face Arthur, finger resting on the trigger.

A look of surprise flitted over Dutch’s features, but it was gone just as quickly. “Woah there, easy,” he said, raising one hand in a passive sort of gesture, the other holding fast to his book. Dutch’s eyes were sharp, calculating, flicking from Arthur’s injured arm up to his face, and Arthur knew, immediately, that Dutch knew just what he was.

But the man didn’t say anything towards it. Didn’t call Arthur a monster, a beast, didn’t question his shaky finger on the trigger. He just set his book carefully on the table, looked straight past the gun in his face, and asked, “How’d you like a good, hot meal, boy?”

He said the word in the same way folk talked about both their sons and their dogs, but Arthur lowered the revolver anyway. In later years, he’d blame it on his aching stomach, the lack of clothes on his back, the throbbing hurt in his arm.

In truth, though, it was something deeper. It was the way Hosea had wrapped his leg earlier in the afternoon, careful and gentle despite Arthur’s growls. It was something that edged in Dutch’s voice, some suggestion of warmth.

Still, it wasn’t until Arthur turned, caught Hosea standing just behind him, slipping his own gun back into his belt, that he knew if they’d ever thought him a threat, he’d be dead where he stood.

* * *

Arthur drives six rounds into the skull of the bear and, when that isn’t enough to take the bear down, fumbles six more bullets into the chamber and fires six more. By the time the bear has enough sense to realize it’s dead, it’s covered enough ground between itself and Arthur to collapse at Arthur’s feet.

He’s examining the bear carefully, running his hands down the length of its hide, when he hears Hosea behind him say, sharp, “Arthur, no.”

Hosea knows, of course, how Arthur finds new forms. He was the first Arthur told, after all. And so Arthur finds himself glancing up at Hosea, saying, defensively, “For an emergency.”

He has a bear, of course, but it was a young thing, a black bear hardly two hundred pounds soaking wet. Safe, by most standards, the energy needed to take the form not even enough to guarantee Arthur a good sleep when he finally bedded down for the night.

But this, a full-grown grizzly, worn with the years, scarred with battles won. Arthur wasn’t in Blackwater when things broke bad, but he still watched Jenny and Davey dying from Pinkerton bullets. He doesn’t want to go back to that place.

“It’ll kill you,” Hosea says, and the sharp edge is still in his voice. Hosea worries, Arthur knows, and he also knows he isn’t worth the worry. If this bear would be enough to protect them, it would be worth every bit of what it took out of Arthur.

Still, Hosea continues, “One day I’m not going to be around to stop you fools from killing yourselves.”

Arthur snorts, mostly because that’s a thought he doesn’t want to consider. Instead, he grabs his knife to start skinning the bear as he says, “Don’t give me that. You’re gonna live forever just t’spite me.”

* * *

Hosea’s mother was a witch, and maybe that’s why the gang formed how it did. They were never untouched by the unusual, but, by the way Hosea has told it to Arthur, it was Arthur himself that started the gang proper as a haven for those civilization would rather see dead. It was Arthur that made Dutch and Hosea into the Van der Linde gang, well and true.

He loves Hosea, Arthur thinks, even more than Dutch.

He’d die for Dutch, yes, almost as easily as breathing, but Hosea is different. Dutch is big, loud, larger than life, a man who acted like a legend long before he was one. But Hosea is the one who listens, who sat down with Arthur those first few days after they took Arthur in and let Arthur explain just what the specifics were, what kind of beast exactly he was. The one to take Arthur on hunting trips, the one who knows even before Arthur does when he’s about ready to tear John’s face up worse.

Dutch is like a father to him. Hosea is more.

* * *

They ride back into camp with the bear’s pelt tied behind Hosea’s saddle.

There’s always more to do. Arthur drops the pronghorn he shot on the ride back across the Heartlands at the cook tent, knows it won’t feed this many people more than a day. He untacks the only mare at the Valentine stable that wouldn’t dance at the sight of him loose with the rest of the herd. He cleans his tack, murmuring greetings at those who pass him. And then it’s moving haybales, sacks of vegetables Pearson and Tilly unload from a wagon after a supply run, chopping wood.

Always more to do.

And there’s Dutch, at the mouth of his tent. Pipe in hand, smoking it slowly in the fading light of the day. Eyes miles away, thinking, calculating. Arthur knows, like he knows his own palms, that Dutch is searching for the next plan, the long game of chess he plays with himself.

He’ll work it out in the end. He always does. That’s the rope Arthur holds tight to.

* * *

For as long as Arthur can remember, there’s been a rumor that Dutch van der Linde sold his soul to the devil at a crossroad for his silver tongue, the same one he uses to entrance the shapechanging beasts at his beck and call.

Frankly, Arthur doesn’t buy it. As much as Dutch attracts the unnatural, that doesn’t mean the man himself has something lacking inside of him, and there’s no hiding that sort of thing with how close to each other they live. Arthur followed Dutch and Hosea all those years ago because they fed him. A deal with the devil had nothing to do with it.

Besides, Arthur often thinks, if Dutch had a silver tongue, he’d be able to keep Arthur and John from each other’s throats, or Micah from causing half the gang to want to kill him.

Still, rumors are rumors. And there’s a rumor Dutch Van der Linde is the devil himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Generally if an event isn't mentioned outright in this fic, you can assume it happens roughly the same as it did in canon, only with added shapeshifter nonsense. That isn't the case for everything in canon, but most things. If you have any questions about anything from how the world works to which canon events line up, feel free to ask them! I'm always toeing the line regarding too much or not enough exposition, so I want to know if something is confusing/doesn't make sense, because it might be that I didn't strike that balance right.


	3. Clemen's Point

The first time Arthur was shot with a silver bullet, Dutch had panicked. He’d had right to, of course, seeing as Arthur himself had told Dutch that silver would kill him.

Arthur learned the rules from his father, who had learned it from his father before him. Arthur didn’t trust Lyle Morgan’s memory in a lot of things, but this was one exception. Lyle had lived as long as he had only because he knew the rules, not because he was particularly careful with the life he led. Arthur watched, listened, learned. By the time Hosea sat him down, asked the specifics of what he was, Arthur knew the rules well.

To take the form of an animal, he needs to know it completely. Nothing too much bigger than him, nothing too much smaller. Cold iron halts the transition, locks him in one form.

Above all, avoid silver.

They’d been on a job, only they’d been ratted out. A human man they’d picked up a few towns back had been offered a good deal of cash for the location of their next job. Dutch shot the traitor dead in the middle of camp, of course, but only after Arthur’d caught a silver bullet in the thigh, the authorities tipped to just what Arthur was. Arthur’d gone down and the wound bled profusely, and Dutch and Hosea had dragged him back semi-conscious with the rest of the fledgling gang trailing them.

Then Dutch, after shooting the man responsible and letting other gang members burn his body, paced back and forth in front of Arthur’s tent where Hosea and Grimshaw hurriedly staunched the bleeding, removed the bullet, and closed the wound. By the way Hosea told it later, Dutch’d been distraught, convinced Arthur was poisoned and unable to do anything to prevent it.

Thing was, Arthur wasn’t poisoned. He got hit with a fever, sure, spent a few days out of it, but got _better_ , got better just the same as any human shot might. His fever faded within the first week, and he was able to transform again without pain within three.

When Arthur saw Dutch again for the first time after he woke up, he’d been polished, self-assured, hair slicked back with pomade and watch chains shining. If Hosea hadn’t told him, Arthur would’ve known nothing about the panicked and helpless state Dutch had been in after he’d been shot.

Old legends, was how Dutch summed it up. Silver wasn’t _good_ , sure, but not near as bad as Arthur was led to believe by his father. Legends with some rationale behind them, seeing as it took longer for Arthur to bounce back from than with previous injuries, but nothing that should keep Arthur off any jobs with the risk of silver bullets.

And as the years passed, nothing indicated to them that he could be wrong. Arthur normally healed a good deal faster than a human might, but the silver slowed the process down. The wound would fester until the silver was removed, and after the removal the wound healed much the same as a human’s wound might. However, the silver didn’t poison him, didn’t make him spike a fever or vomit, didn’t burn or numb his skin. A risk, but one that wasn’t a death sentence.

It didn’t stop Colm from trying, of course.

* * *

It must sting, Arthur thinks.

Everything is a blur. His blood sings in his skin, a starburst radiating out from his shoulder, swallowing up every sensation on his left side. He can’t remember how he got here, lying in his cot with a flurry of movement around him, Grimshaw and Hosea half-formed shapes and touches he can barely feel over the pain.

He remembers falling off his horse, he thinks. He remembers Dutch’s voice, surrounding him like a vice grip. He remembers Colm’s plan, the trap for Dutch, and he tries to repeat it again, thoughts of Pinkertons tearing through camp rolling unbidden through his head.

But Hosea just shushes Arthur quietly, and, when Arthur protests in words that end up coming out as a pained slur, murmurs, “It’s alright, you’ve told us. We know.” As Hosea speaks, Grimshaw brushes something cool over Arthur’s forehead, and, from his spot kneeling on Arthur’s cot, John squeezes Arthur’s knee in what might be an attempt at comfort.

The bullet is silver, Arthur knows that, because Colm had told him so in one of the few moments Arthur was lucid. And yet, John, with his eyes watering and a rag tied over his nose and mouth, is still there, swimming in Arthur’s vision. The smell, something rotting, hangs in Arthur’s nose and makes every breath heavy into his lungs. His shoulder, septic, bullet festering and flesh rotting, and John must be sick with it even with his nose and mouth covered.

It’s odd, he thinks, because there are plenty of able-bodied men in the Van der Linde gang that aren’t John, whose noses wouldn’t sting from the smell of the silver and the rot alike.

* * *

The same rules about silver don’t apply to John.

Arthur had found the wolf form when he was twenty. On a hunt with Hosea, they had been set upon by a pack of wolves. A shame to shoot them, really, as wolves were generally creatures Arthur and Hosea both preferred to leave well enough alone. They weren’t animals particularly inclined to go after humans either unless they were hungry, but it had been a harsh winter and the deer lashed to the backs of both horses must’ve seemed like an easy meal.

The alpha of the pack was large but not riskily so, coat streaked with amber and grey, the sort of wolf that blended with the snowy forest they’d been surrounded by.

Arthur’s father had had forms all black and gold-eyed, and Arthur had never thought to ask if that was a preference or a requirement, something inherited that hadn’t graced Arthur. Now, of course, he wouldn’t ever know. What he did know was that his own shapes were always dictated by the animals he’d got them from. And so he examined the wolf’s teeth, its paws, the soft, fur-lined ears, knowing they would be his own in due time.

It was not the first time Hosea had watched Arthur take a new shape, but his steady, interested gaze still made Arthur want to squirm in the same way he’d wanted to when Hosea was teaching him how to pick a lock. It was only when Arthur straightened, went for his knife to start skinning the animals, that Hosea spoke, said, “Y’gonna test it out?”

Arthur huffed a breath in response and, when it seemed like Hosea wasn’t going to let up, shrugged out of his coat.

The transformation was like one big shiver. Arthur reaching down inside of himself, pulling the shape out through his skin. A ripple down his skin, bones stretching, hair growing out into fur. One last shake, and Arthur had a wolf.

It came in handy when the Van der Linde gang picked up its own resident werewolf.

They’d saved John as a starving twelve-year-old from a hanging, some homesteaders who didn’t like the kid’s sticky fingers, and it wasn’t until the full moon that Dutch and Hosea knew just what they had gotten themselves into. And, of course, it had become up to Arthur, the only one who could even get near John on a full moon, to curb the feral pup. John had largely learned to control himself when the moon got full, but not before Arthur had gotten nearly used to the feeling of John’s teeth in his skin.

The first time Arthur watched John nearly die, he’d been seventeen and shot in the arm with a silver bullet. It was a stray shot, one meant for Arthur, not the still gangly wolf pup they’d brought mostly as a lookout just to get him a little more experience. The bullet knocked John right back into his human shape, and he’d already been vomiting and near unconscious by the time Arthur dragged him onto the back of his horse.

It was far from the last time John almost breathed his last, but Arthur still woke in a cold sweat sometimes, images of John choking on bloody bile and burning hot with fever echoing around in his head. And on those long nights after John had disappeared, leaving Abigail and a kid he’d passed his blood to behind, Arthur tried hard not to think of the possibility of his brother with a silver bullet in his belly, dead and gone without his family even knowing.

* * *

Somewhere in his fever, Arthur wants to bring it up again. Watching John writhe on that cot, not sure if he would make it through the next hour, or if what pumped through his veins would burn him up from the inside.

Now, kneeling on Arthur’s cot, holding down Arthur’s legs at the thighs, John must feel something similar, and Arthur wants to apologize. Wants to tell John that it will be alright, that he forgives him, that there are some things worth forgetting.

And then Hosea is leaning over him with a knife, and Grimshaw has her hands framing the hole in his shoulder, and something in that should tip Arthur off to what’s coming next. But the old is mixing with the new, Arthur fevered and dying, John poisoned and dying, and Arthur can’t get anything out besides, “Y’remember—” before the knife is in his flesh, and his voice breaks into something between a moan and a scream. He ripples, teeth growing and sharpening before fading just as quick, his mind unable to settle on a form, unable to pull anything coherent.

Things are blurry, but John is so pale he looks like a ghost, and something in the back of Arthur’s mind cuts through the agony, something haunting in its fear that Arthur may not be able to save his brother from the death this life guarantees, quick and violent.

He doesn’t know how, but he manages to drag his good arm up from the cot, grip the fabric that hangs loose and soaked with sweat from John’s chest. And John brings one of his own hands up, puts it over Arthur’s carefully, gently, uncaring of how Arthur’s skin must burn him. Arthur’s vision is blurry, but, even then, he can see the tear tracks on John’s face.

Arthur won’t remember this.

* * *

When Charles comes to him with stew, four days after his return, it’s quiet. He still feels feverish, swinging back and forth between chills and sweating, but he’s lucid, something that couldn’t be said consistently for the previous fevered hours.

Charles’s hand is cool when it rests on his forehead, and Arthur is only just together enough to stop himself from leaning into the touch, the calluses on Charles’s palm not enough to mar the feeling of a gentle touch. He can blame the fever for wanting the contact.

They’ve set watches, Hosea, Grimshaw, Tilly, Charles, Mary-Beth. John has stopped in for one, though when Arthur tried to question his motivations, all the man did was grunt at him and sit stand-offishly in the corner of Arthur’s tent. And between the watches are visits, those without the time or patience to sit vigil but wanting to see Arthur’s face all the same. Trying to assure themselves he won’t kick the bucket without their say-so, as far as Arthur can tell.

“Ain’t dead yet,” Arthur mutters, and Charles snorts.

“Fever isn’t gone,” Charles replies, mouth quirking slightly. “There’s still time.”

Arthur’s learned he can joke with Charles like this. Hosea, no, not when it earns him a light slap to his uninjured arm or shoulder and a warning not to talk like that, seriousness hidden behind the air of a joke. With Grimshaw and Mary-Beth it just creates more fussing, and, as for Tilly, she sees through Arthur far more than he likes.

Charles, he thinks, can see through him too, but differently. And that’s both a good and bad thing. 

“Can you sit up?” Charles asks, and that’s another thing Arthur can add to the long list of why he likes Charles. Not assuming he was knocked down completely, completely helpless to eat on his goddamn own. He’s had enough of being spoon-fed over the past few days, even if he can’t remember half of it.

“Sure,” Arthur drawls, and gets to it.

It’s slower than he’d like, sitting up. They had him on Swanson’s good stuff when his fever was at its highest but, now, Arthur has refused more than low doses of laudanum and the good whiskey. He doesn’t like not having his head when he’s laid low like this, and especially not with the threat of Colm bringing the law into this feud. He doesn’t know if anyone followed him back to camp, but the possibility won’t leave his mind completely.

The trade-off, of course, is the ache that thrums through him. His shoulder is the worst, a deep red hurt that thumps into his brain with every beat of his heart. But the O’Driscolls hadn’t exactly been gentle with him, and his skin is patterned with a variety of multicolored bruises, fractured or bruised bones under it all. So, though he can heave himself up, it’s long, and difficult, and leaves him panting as he leans against his wagon, gripping at it to remain upright. And Charles watches, like Arthur knows he will, just as much as he knows that the man will jump forward if it seems like Arthur is at risk of collapsing. Not before though, and Arthur is grateful for that.

He does step forward when Arthur’s up, shoves a couple of pillows behind his back. Arthur knows, as much as he hates to admit it, that his body would never cooperate enough to reach behind him, not with the hole in his shoulder, so that much he allows. Still, when Charles passes him the bowl of stew, Arthur rests it between his legs, ignoring the ache in his cracked ribs as he bends over the bowl, because goddamn it is he going to eat his food by his own power.

It’s quiet, for a time. Pearson’s stew is mostly tasteless as usual, but Arthur isn’t sure if his stomach would be able anything richer anyway. In the first few days, even broth made his stomach roll like it would come straight out of his belly. Charles takes a seat on one of the crates that have become a permeant perch of Arthur’s caretakers, seemingly content to watch the lake where it peeks through the gap in the canvas that surrounds Arthur’s tent.

It’s only when Arthur is staring at the dregs of the stew, debating if his gut will stand any more, that Charles speaks, asks, quietly, “What do you remember?”

Arthur glances at him out of the corner of his eye.

This is a question he would expect from Hosea. Hosea, who knows Arthur almost too well, who has been there for twenty-some-odd years, who wants to know, wants to listen. But he’s only known Charles something like nine months now, not even a year, and yet, Arthur finds, he can trust him. And, besides, he’s already trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes, just the act of eating making him tired enough that maybe his judgement isn’t the best.

He huffs a breath. “Not much. Goes in an’ out.” And then, when Charles is quiet, prompting more, “Had me chained up. Iron. Colm knows the rules, this long feudin’ ‘gainst Dutch. This,” and Arthur gestures to his shoulder, “weren’t even him, just some O’Driscoll he gave silver bullets and weren’t careful ‘bout how he used him.”

“He didn’t want to kill you.” Though it’s a question, Charles doesn’t phrase it like one. This is the first Arthur’s been clearheaded for any extended time for ages, and clearly Charles knows it, wants to get a clear version of the story Arthur has told in fits and starts over the past handful of days.

Arthur rolls his good shoulder, winces anyway at the pain of it. “Nah, needed me alive if he wanted t’get Dutch. Knew he could rough me up, but knew he weren’t gonna kill me if he wanted Dutch here. Just got lucky he ain’t smart enough to remember that it ain’t just the animals I can do. Can also pick a damn lock. That, an’ that Dutch ain’t left yet.”

A moment, Charles looking not at Arthur, but out at the lake again. And then, “Hosea was furious.” Charles says it almost like an accusation, but not one directed at Hosea. “Still is.”

That Arthur knows. Though Hosea has tried to hide it, has tried to enter Arthur’s tent with an air of lightness, like nothing is wrong, Arthur’s close enough to Dutch’s tent to hear the muffled arguments. He hasn’t caught everything, not in and out as he is, but he knows enough to figure that Hosea blames Dutch for all this, for not coming for him sooner.

But, still, “Ain’t Dutch’s fault. Would’a gotten himself caught ‘f he’d come. And we ain’t nothin’ without him.”

“Sure,” Charles says, but there’s an edge to it, something firm just under the careful tone. Arthur rests his head against the wagon, unable to keep it up when Charles continues, “I thought you were dead, riding in like you did. Dutch—Dutch didn’t think anything was wrong. Said you likely had something else t’do.”

“Run off plenty before.” Even in his own mouth, the words sound hollow to Arthur. Because he had suggested the meeting place after the parley, and he wasn’t in the habit of missing a regrouping like that.

But, it’s Dutch, and he must’ve had a reason, and Arthur’s not the one that needs to stay safe. And as much as Arthur’s eyelids are starting to droop, he knows he’d trade his life for Dutch many times over. “An’ it’s better me than him, anyway,” he mutters.

“You’re not so much a fool as that,” Charles replies, and there’s something, lining his voice and worrying at something under Arthur’s skin.

“You got too much faith in me, Charles.” Arthur’s arm aches, his head pounding, and he doesn’t want this conversation, doesn’t want Charles pushing him to be better than he is, not when he’s had enough of that already, and not when the end result is always going to be a better person.

It’s only a moment before Charles sighs, leans forward, helps Arthur lay back on the cot. And Arthur is too exhausted to even complain about needing to be helped, only manages to hum back when Charles says, “Get some rest.”

Later, when Sean’s luck runs out in the middle of a dusty red street, Arthur will think of this moment. Of how it had felt, so close to the edge, and wishing the darkness had took him. Of the welcoming world where he wouldn’t have to see more of his family fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dutch shooting a traitor in the middle of camp is a reference to a conversation you can have with Tilly before playing dominoes with her. 
> 
> Surprisingly, despite my fondness for hurt/comfort and the aftermath of injury, I think this is the first time I've written explicitly about the aftermath of Peacemakers beyond just a mentioned memory. Any fic that goes into Peacemakers is very much a two cakes situation for me, so hopefully it's the same for y'all. It seemed important, especially when it involves and explains more shapeshifter lore.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed, and stay healthy!


	4. Shady Belle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just editing this chapter note to drop a quick content warning here for body horror. It's not too severe, but some comments I got on this chapter after posting made me think it would be safer to include it.

Something is wrong.

Shady Belle sits unsettled in Arthur’s stomach.

They’ve lived in worse places, sure. Arthur can remember vividly the three days him, Dutch, and John hid out in a half-flooded root cellar just to be absolutely sure that they were free from the law after a job went bad. At least Arthur has a roof over his head, can sleep in a real bed for once, and doesn’t have to consider the real prospect of waking up soaked in anything beyond sweat.

He hates the bayou, though. Arthur finds himself fond of most animals, maybe influenced by so often inhabiting their skin, but alligators are one large exception. He finds himself unnerved by their eyes, the way they stay cold and blank even when they thrash and roll their prey. The gators, the humidity, the way they just keep on running. One more job, Dutch keeps saying, one big score, and they can be out.

Still, Arthur thinks, this isn’t where they’re meant to be.

* * *

The lion is a mistake.

He’d picked it up after a chance encounter at Emerald Ranch. Or, chance wasn’t exactly the right word, not when Arthur had spent the past days tracking down escaped circus animals for a caravan that had been overturned. But none of them had been real, save the lion that Arthur shot dead in the middle of the horse paddock.

It wasn’t like he’d ever seen a lion before and it wasn’t like he’d see one again. And here was a dead one, lying at his feet. It was bigger than most of his other forms, sure, but this was a once in a lifetime chance. Ignoring it would be a waste, and it wasn’t like he’d ever use it, right?

An emergency, he will tell Hosea later, lying in his bed at Shady Belle.

It isn’t until a month later that Arthur tries to take the form, and it’s a mistake, that’s for sure. He knows that immediately, as soon as his bones crunch, as his shoulders are overtaken by rippling tanned fur. But the O’Driscolls had sent Kieran Duffy’s body in on a horse before trying to kill the rest of Arthur’s family at a place they’d thought was safe, and Arthur _panics_.

It’s like it rips out of him, golden fur and wicked claws and sharp teeth, shredding his clothing to bits. And then he’s in the thick of it, biting and clawing and hearing the bangs of guns and the screams of men.

Arthur barely feels the bullet that buries in his skin, barely feels the flesh he rips his teeth into, barely tastes the blood in his mouth. Because swimming through the back of his brain he can still see the image of John snatching Jack up, bodying him back into the house as silver bullets tear up the earth around them. And he knows what a bullet like that would do to a werewolf pup, and his teeth cut deep and men bleed and die and their blood soaks into Arthur’s skin.

He doesn’t notice when the O’Driscolls retreat, instead turning in a circle, searching, head pounding so hard he can’t even think beyond finding the next O’Driscoll to tear apart. His chest is heaving, he knows that, mouth open in a pant, and he can’t—he can’t—

It’s only when Hosea takes his face in his hands that Arthur realizes he’s sunk to the ground. Arthur’s head must be heavy and yet Hosea doesn’t seem to mind, hand on either side of Arthur’s chin, fingers tangled in Arthur’s mane. And he’s saying, “Arthur? Arthur, you goddamn fool—come back Arthur, I can’t—can’t help you like this, Arthur, _come back_.”

The air puffs out of Arthur’s mouth and he wants, so badly, to sleep. Hosea seems so small like this, dwarfed by the sheer mass of this body, and yet he kneels in front of Arthur, unafraid of the blood that covers Arthur’s fur.

Arthur reaches inside himself, tugs, and the lion folds back into him.

It’s slow, and Arthur isn’t sure why it’s slow, but his vision is already blackening at the edges. Something’s wrong, he thinks, and it’s not just the strain of too large a shift. Judging by his face, eyes still locked on Arthur, Hosea knows it too.

And then Arthur is on his hands and knees in the bloody dirt outside the plantation house, and Hosea is speaking again, but all Arthur can hear is his tone, the panic through it. Arthur’s back is twinging where the bullet caught him, seizing up his limbs. Someone catches him around the waist, ducks under an arm, tries to haul him to his feet. But the blackness is encompassing, overwhelming, and the world disappears in a wave of silence.

* * *

Something is wrong.

Arthur overhears whispers from Dutch’s room. They share a wall, and the bullet wound keeps Arthur immobile in bed next to it.

The one benefit of the lion, from what he’s been told, is that the thick meat of the big cat’s muscle caught the bullet, slowed it enough when it pierced the muscle over his shoulder blade for it to just nestle against the bone. A shallow wound, by all accounts, but that doesn’t mean instant healing neither. The bullet was silver, but that Arthur already knew, because that was all Colm ever used when dealing with the Van der Lindes. It means Arthur is laid up longer than usual, banned from taking part in jobs no matter how much Arthur insists he’s better, that it doesn’t even hurt.

It’s Micah, Dutch is talking to. It’s Micah more and more, whispering in Dutch’s ear. They’re making deals with the local vampire. Only, now the deal has fallen through and the man has betrayed them. And Micah’s pressing Dutch more and more into killing the man, driving a stake right through the man’s heart, says it will get the pressure off their backs. Frankly, Arthur doubts it. Despite the vampire being Italian, being a monster by most civilized society standards, he still has enough money to have the police force in his pocket.

Dutch isn’t asking Arthur, though.

There’s a sour feeling in Arthur’s stomach more and more often these days. It isn’t infection, not when Arthur’s skin is knitting back together without inflammation. No, it’s Hosea and Dutch’s harsh arguments in the middle of the night, maybe. It’s Karen’s drinking and Molly’s fury, maybe. It’s the grief so close to the surface of every conversation, grief for Kieran and Sean and Mac and Davey and Jenny and all those lost and yet to be lost. It’s the stink of the swamp, the heaviness that gets in whenever Arthur breathes, and sense of warpedness somewhere deep within Arthur.

* * *

Hosea insists on the bank job, and he insists on having Arthur along with him. It makes sense, he says, since Arthur’s shoulder still ain’t right and the bullet from the attack on Shady Belle was only mostly closed, and he trusts Arthur to run a distraction with him, anyway. The only better fit, Hosea says, would be Abigail, and Abigail is still shaken after the attack on Shady Belle and how close silver bullets had come to Jack.

Arthur doesn’t know why the thought of it sits so heavy in his gut. Maybe it’s Bronte, the raid on his manor house still fresh in the eyes of the law. Arthur wasn’t allowed on that particular trip, but John sat next to his bed and told him later, and, though John still held a special kind of hatred for the vampire after he’d held Jack for ransom, the way John spoke of Bronte’s end with regret showed just how bad it had gotten. Or maybe it’s Micah, the perpetual smirk on his face as he eyes Arthur across the campfire.

Or maybe it’s what’s inside Arthur, the unsettling sickness under his skin, that sense of wrongness he can’t hope to identify.

Hosea insists, though, says it’s just enough to make them all safe, says all the tests he’s been running say it’s as easy as a city bank could get, and Dutch insists along with him, and Arthur has never been able to say no to either of them.

* * *

They’re waiting for them.

The makeshift bomb goes off in the market, just in the right place to cause destruction but not harm, and when it happens Hosea and Arthur are moving through alleyways, Arthur back in the familiar form of a coonhound, more easily overlooked in a city filled with strays.

If it’s a setup, Arthur doesn’t know. He does know that he and Hosea run straight into a whole pack of Pinkertons when they turn a corner.

In seconds, they’re surrounded and, though Hosea’s hand is already at his gun, they’re outnumbered. “Mr. Matthews,” Milton says. A growl is already rising in Arthur’s throat, one that makes Milton turn to him, ask, “And Mr. Morgan, I presume?”

They’re fucked. Arthur knows that instantly, knows it by the guns and the look on Milton’s face both. He’s only seen the man twice, at the river and at Clemen’s Point, but the man is only ever this self-assured when he knows there’s no risk to his own wellbeing. When he’s completely sure he’s in control.

Hosea, to his credit, tries. “And to what do we owe the pleasure, Mr. Milton?”

Milton snorts, but it’s a cruel sound. “Please, spare me the pleasantries. If you’d be so kind, we have an appointment to keep with Mr. Van der Linde.”

Arthur’s growl is growing louder, but that doesn’t prevent Milton from stepping forward, gun not lowering from its position, pointed at Hosea’s head. Hosea, true to form, just says, voice neutral. “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

There’s something, a flash of emotion across Milton’s face. Arthur can’t help but remember that day in Clemen’s Point, Milton calling them savages, and, as Milton fists a hand in the collar of Hosea’s shirt, Arthur goes tense. However, it isn’t until Milton presses the gun to the base of Hosea’s neck, that Arthur snarls, leaping for the man’s throat before he even knows what he’s doing.

It’s a stupid idea, because the man next to Milton kicks Arthur away hard and, when the strike knocks the wind out of Arthur, the man shoots him for good measure.

There’s a shout from Hosea, and then some scuffling before the dull thump of something blunt hitting flesh. But Arthur can barely hear it, not when the pain of the bullet splits into him like a red-hot bolt through his leg.

Something’s wrong, he knows. His whole skin buzzes like something’s crawling on him.

Arthur tries to struggle to his feet, but his ribs twinge, and he can’t breathe right. Blood runs hot and wet down his leg, and there’s movement next to him, the sound of a pistol cocking.

“Come quietly,” Milton says, “or the next one’s in his head.”

It won’t make any difference, Arthur thinks with a loose sort of clarity. Head or leg, it doesn’t matter, because the Pinkertons are going to let him bleed out anyway. It’s a ploy to get Hosea to not make a fuss, but it won’t make any difference, because they’re both dead men, especially since they’re now muscling Hosea forward, and Arthur can’t even breathe right, let alone stop them from taking Hosea away from him.

But Hosea lets them anyway, because he won’t ever let someone put a bullet through Arthur that he could prevent, if he can help it.

Arthur barely notices the toe that taps at his side, the unfamiliar voice above him that asks, “Sir?”

Barely a pause before Milton is saying, “Leave ‘im. I want Van der Linde.”

It takes too much effort, but Arthur lifts his head, sees Hosea held fast by both arms as the Pinkertons leave the alley with him, leave Arthur behind. He can’t catch enough air in his lungs, but he isn’t going to just lay there and let Milton take Hosea, go after his family. He can’t breathe, but he can scramble to his feet, find a form that can tear them all apart.

And _something_ is _wrong_. Arthur reaches into himself, and something misshapen comes out.

What he was intending, Arthur isn’t sure. Normally shifting comes naturally, his body knowing what to do almost before Arthur thinks it. Human is the stopgap, of course—he can shift from animal to human to animal almost in half a second, so quick it seems instant, but human is the middle point. _Arthur_ is the middle point, always.

Not this time.

What erupts from his body is a mismatch of parts. Wolf, dog, cougar, bear, all mashed into one body, something with ripples of different color, bone, muscle, teeth. His legs scrabble on the ground, only his legs are different lengths, different shapes.

Arthur wants to vomit. His entire skin is burning, prickling with needles, and he tries to shift back, and tries and tries and _tries_. But he’s stuck, trapped in something sickening, stomach rolling and heat thrumming in his skin.

This is what death must feel like. No worse than this, surely.

His family is still in danger. The thought moves through his head once, twice, a third time, louder each time. Hosea, his father in everything but name, who Arthur owed this life to. Dutch, bright and burning, the leader Arthur would die for any day. John, the closest thing he’s ever had to a brother, with a family waiting for him at home.

Lenny, Javier, Bill. Charles. _Charles_.

He still can’t breathe, but Arthur heaves himself back to his feet, misshapen body shuddering. Wavers, shot leg threatening to give up and crumple, no matter this new form.

He’s lived this far. Shot, beaten, nearly hung more than once.

He can live through this.

* * *

He shows up too late.

Milton is yelling, Arthur can hear that even through the pounding of his own blood in his ears, but it doesn’t matter. Dutch won’t listen. Dutch won’t surrender, not when he always has a plan, always has a way to get them through, always manages to save them by virtue of his mouth alone.

But maybe Milton knows that, because he doesn’t let Dutch start talking. Arthur is only stumbling his way into the edge of the mess when Milton replies to Dutch’s request for negotiation with shoving Hosea forward.

A shot, loud in Arthur’s too sensitive ears, and Hosea falls.

Arthur _snarls_ , a mutilated sound through the shape of his body. He’s not alone, yells that he knows are Dutch, John, Lenny, Javier, and then someone is firing at Milton.

The world erupts into chaos.

There’s shouting, Arthur’s side taking fire, giving fire, but Arthur doesn’t care. He lunges forward, ignores the blood that streaks down his leg at the movement. Shouting, some of it at him, he thinks, because a Pinkerton steps in his way, tries to block him. And Arthur’s teeth aren’t lined up right, not all of them from the same beasts, but they’re still sharp enough to tear into the man’s throat.

There’s blood in his mouth and Arthur doesn’t know if it’s his or the men he’s killed, bullets echoing in his ears, and he’s almost, almost—

There, and the smell of Hosea’s blood drenches the air, and Arthur is panicked for half a second before he can see the jerky rise and fall of Hosea’s chest. Not dead, he tells himself. Not dead yet. There’s time still.

Dutch and the others are on the roofs, he thinks, and it sends a pang of bitterness down his throat, that they were leaving Hosea, leaving him bleeding on the ground. Still, Milton’s shout of, “ _Get Van der Linde!_ ” shifts the focus away from Arthur.

Arthur doesn’t, _can’t_ think about his family, not when Hosea’s breath comes ragged and broken in Arthur’s ears. And, as much as he feels the threat to Dutch in his bones, the Pinkertons are dispersing, not one glance to the man dying in the street, thinking him no longer a threat, maybe, valuing the head of Dutch van der Linde more.

Mostly, at least. One Pinkerton pauses, whirls his gun on Arthur, seems to see him for the first time. But Arthur steps over Hosea and growls, deep as he can make it, and the distortion rattles through him.

If it’s a warped specter of death the man sees or just a malformed beast that threatens his own life, Arthur isn’t sure, but the man stumbles backward anyway, and it’s enough for Arthur to take Hosea’s collar in his teeth and start dragging.

Further, out of the middle of the street, and Arthur manages to heave Hosea onto his back, and it’s the warm blood soaking into his pelt that gets him moving, stumbling to the edges of the city and Shady Belle beyond it.

He isn’t breathing right, air rushing through incompatible lungs, and he can hear the pounding of his own heart in his ears, his own blood flowing thin through his scattered parts.

* * *

Something is wrong.

Arthur’s legs give out somewhere in the bayou.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere in writing the first draft of this chapter I realized I had to shoot Arthur three times in two chapters to make what happens at the end there justified. The boy is having a rough time. But, anyway, this is our first real moment of canon divergence and so I’m very much interested in seeing what y’all think!


	5. Lakay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially spoilery content warning in the end note. This was a rough one to write, folks, and I’m still not sure if I did it justice.

He’s lifted, he thinks.

Strong arms, strong shoulders.

The creak of wagon wheels somewhere distant. Sound comes in and out, and he thinks he’s moving, or being moved.

There’s breathing, harsh and gasping, and he isn’t sure if it’s his own. There was something, wasn’t there? Someone was hurt—

Bursts of light over his eyelids. A thick, wet smell of mud. There are bird calls in the distance, the splash of the wagon wheels through what must be ruts of standing water.

His stomach rolls, wants to empty itself onto the wooden boards he’s lying on, and Arthur is half tempted to let it, up until the blackness creeps into his vision again and a dark numbness drags everything, stomach included, back down into it.

* * *

Arthur comes awake to an ache all over. Heaver, sharper where the Pinkerton bullet pierced him and deeper in the older O’Driscoll wounds, but all over all the same. He doesn’t feel right, and no wonder, not when he stretches his arms in front of him and finds a sickening amalgamation of fur and front paws.

The memory of the botched transformation comes back in a rush, and he realizes he doesn’t know where he is. It’s always a panicking thought, unfamiliar territory, made worse when he’s hurting as much as he is. All around him are the old, worn boards of an old shack, some building that is slowly crumbling to pieces, the deep smell of mildew permeating the air and, even deeper, the stink of mud.

Someone has draped a blanket over him, but he’s lying on a straw mattress on the floor. His body is stiff, unfamiliar, and he’s trying to push himself to his feet when a voice comes, says, “Easy, Arthur, easy,”

The voice is familiar, calming, and Arthur finds himself relaxing even before he finds his head turning to the side, blinking a couple times as his eyes focus on none other than Charles.

The man had been sharpening arrows, Arthur’s guessing, but he’s laying them to the side now, leaning towards Arthur with one hand raised, a calming motion. He looks rough, worn in a way Arthur doesn’t expect. Charles always looks like a casual sort of messy, not trying to be put together but still managing to look better than half the folks at camp. But, now, there are bags under his eyes, dark like he hasn’t gotten a long night’s sleep, and he’s sitting hunched, like his back is sore from being a long time in one position.

Still, he leans forward when all Arthur does is look at him, asks, “You with me?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, since Arthur can’t answer, and his head is swimming besides. Instead he lifts his head, looks deliberately around the room, and then focuses his eyes on Charles again.

Charles understands what he’s trying to ask. “We’re in an abandoned village. Used to be called Lakay, according to some old maps Lenny managed find. Out in the middle of the bayou, and this is Night Folk country on top of all that. Isn’t somewhere the law is going to come looking for us.”

Arthur blinks again, tries to think. He knows the place Charles means, has been around here more than once scrounging up orchids and herbs. Still, there’s something he should be remembering, isn’t there? It wasn’t just him, fleeing from the law in Saint Denis, it was—?

Charles, maybe seeing Arthur’s confusion, continues, “Lenny caught a bullet in the arm, but he’s alright. He’s with Sadie, keeping an eye on everyone as they move the camp from Shady Belle. The reverend and Miss Grimshaw rode ahead, are here with us, wanted to be here to treat you and—”

 _Hosea_.

Arthur is scrambling before he even realizes what he’s doing, and his leg immediately crumples under him, not anywhere near healed enough to support his weight. If it’s even healed at all, seeing as Arthur has no idea how long he’s been out.

Charles, to his credit, catches Arthur around the middle, says, again, “Easy, easy, he’s—he’s here, Arthur. Let me—let me take you to him?”

Asking permission, Arthur realizes, to pick him up, because there was no way he was going anywhere on his leg, even if folks around him would let him. The long, stumbling, panicked walk out of Saint Denis is still hazy in Arthur’s mind, but he’s sure he did nothing to help matters, walking on it like he did. The only hope he has for moving at all is being carried, especially with Charles watching over him as he is.

But, as much as he hates the thought of needing to be carried, he wants to see Hosea. _Needs_ to see Hosea, to make sure those gasping breaths he heard on the street in Saint Denis are still coming.

He nods his acquiescence, and Charles gathers him into his arms.

Turns out, Hosea is only a room over. Lying in a bed, with Grimshaw sitting in a chair next to him, sitting watch. Arthur’s eyes light on Hosea himself as Charles puts him down, and his stomach drops.

It’s not a pretty sight.

“Found you two around Lagras,” Charles says behind him as Arthur limps a little closer, rests his head on the side of the ratty mattress Hosea is lying on. “He was like this then. Did what I could to stop the bleeding, and Miss Grimshaw did more, but—he hasn’t woken.”

Hosea is pale, paler than Arthur has ever seen him. Normally the man has a ruddy edge to the skin of his face, the result of years spent in the sun, but that’s gone now. He’s pale, eyes almost sunken, the dark rings under them making him look ghostly. For once, Arthur doesn’t want the senses that come with his transformations, because, even with how mangled his nose is between shapes, he can smell the deep rot of infection that has rooted itself in Hosea’s body. And Hosea’s breathing, shallow and labored, weighs heavy in his ears.

For most, gut shots are a long, slow death.

Arthur wants to run, to not face this slow, creeping infection. He can’t stand it, can take any bullet except those in his loved ones. He can’t flee, though, even if his legs were working right. Hosea deserves him by his side, to fight through this together.

Arthur shifts, debates whether his legs could support him putting his front paws on the bed, trying, even though Grimshaw and Swanson and Charles must’ve already done so, to wake Hosea up. To see his eyes, closed since Milton put a bullet in him.

He wonders, in the back of his mind, how Charles knew it was Arthur when he finally stumbled upon the end of the trail he’d left. How he found them was less of a question, especially when Arthur himself had witnessed firsthand just what a skilled tracker Charles was, and Arthur wasn’t covering his trail besides, too desperate to get Hosea away. A mess of bones and fur, and yet Charles was still here when Arthur woke, telling him to calm down in a room that felt a world away from Hosea.

Arthur takes a rocking step back, and then curls up on the floor near Hosea’s bed. His leg aches, as do the old wounds in his back and shoulder, but he doesn’t care. Hosea’s breathing echoes in his ears, and he needs to know that it continues.

He hears a huff of a sigh from Charles, but no one makes him move.

* * *

“Holy hell, is that Arthur?”

All Arthur can manage is a halfhearted growl, lifting his lip to show misshapen teeth. It doesn’t sound right, rumbling through his throat, and it doesn’t deter Lenny either, who creeps closer, peering at him with a subdued shade of his normal brightness. Arthur huffs, but it’s only when he picks up his head, growls again, that Lenny backs off a bit, one hand held up in a placating gesture, muttering, “Sorry, sorry.”

Arthur had heard the wagons with the rest of camp roll up from his unmoving position at Hosea’s bedside, heard the noises of people unpacking, but Lenny is the first that has come to see Arthur or Hosea. For all intents, Lenny looks alright. His left arm is bound up, but he’s moving around like it barely pains him, bounced back from the bullet wound with the kind of elasticity only allowed to the young. Still, there’s a solemn atmosphere that pervades everyone in Lakay, and Lenny is no different.

Arthur knows why, of course, but bringing it to mind only lays a tightness in his chest that makes it hard to breathe.

Lenny stands there for a second, glancing once, briefly, at where Hosea lies on the bed, before turning his eyes back to Arthur. “Just got the rest of ‘em settled, out in the houses. Thought I should let you know, seein’ as we ain’t got—well, you know.”

Arthur doesn’t, but there’s something comforting about the sound of his voice. He rests his head back on his paws, keeping his eyes on Lenny.

After a pause, Lenny settles into a chair by Hosea’s bedside, vacated by Grimshaw when the first few riders came in. It’s been made clear enough that, while they prefer to have someone human near Hosea’s bedside, Grimshaw trusts Arthur enough to make a fuss if something happens when only Arthur’s watching him.

Now, it’s just Arthur and Lenny and Hosea’s raspy breathing. Lenny glances once more towards Hosea, no more than half a second, and Arthur knows himself how hard it is to lay eyes on Hosea for any length of time, when the bullet has robbed the man of what makes him who he is.

Instead Lenny’s gaze drifts back to Arthur, and he says, haltingly, “I was wonderin’—Charles, Charles said—Christ, but we thought you were dead, when they only had Hosea.”

The kid is stumbling over his words something fierce and, though Arthur isn’t much one for comforting folks, he almost wishes he could say something soft, reassuring, let Lenny believe that the world isn’t ending. His body has robbed him of even that, however.

“They got me up on the roof,” Lenny says, gesturing to his shot arm, and he’s talking just to fill the silence, but Arthur doesn’t mind. “Weren’t serious or nothin’, but I tripped when it happened, went down, and there weren’t no time to stop. S’why the rest of them kept on runnin’, I think. Too many law for stoppin’. But the law only wanted Dutch, f’course, and they didn’t think it was worth double checkin’ I was dead, I reckon. So I managed to get away. Happened t’stumble up on Charles on the way back to Shady Belle, and he said we oughta meet him here, and to send Grimshaw and Swanson in a wagon up ahead, in case he managed to track you and Hosea down. But—but I guess maybe you already been told that.”

Arthur hadn’t, not in so many words, but it makes sense enough. At least, the pattern of events, Charles and Lenny getting free, managing to lead the camp somewhere safe. Only—

Dutch would call this doubt, what’s murmuring in the back of Arthur’s brain. Not doubt for Lenny, no, not when the kid still had shades of that bright-eyed idealism that Dutch tended to pass on to everyone that followed him.

But Lenny—Lenny was left behind, wasn’t he? And he wasn’t the only one.

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth, like bile bubbling up from his stomach, and Arthur pushes it back even further. No use dwelling, not when this is all they are now.

The room has grown silent, filled once again with the rasp of Hosea’s breathing. Arthur heaves a sigh, all he really can do like this, and readjusts his position on the floor. When his eyes drift back up, Lenny is looking him over carefully. More curious than anything else, which is surprising to Arthur. Miss Grimshaw still winces whenever she looks at him, and Arthur is sure that sense of wrongness would possess most people who throw a glance his way. Seems that isn’t the case, though, not with Lenny, and not with Charles.

After a moment, Lenny asks, voice quiet, “Does it hurt? Bein’ like that?”

It doesn’t, not exactly, not now that he’s adjusted to the feeling of it. More like an itch all over his body, something that crawls in his skin whenever he breathes in through ill formed lungs, and a nausea that just won’t quit. His body knows something is wrong, that his skin is malformed and mottled, and yet there’s nothing it can do to right itself.

That’s too much to explain with no voice to do so, so Arthur just shakes his head.

Lenny breathes a breath. “Christ, it looks like it hurts. Guess you can’t—can’t say what the hell it is, huh? Do you—do you know? Why it happened?”

He shakes his head again.

“Reckon you don’t know how to fix it neither.”

The question makes something sharp sting in Arthur’s stomach. Because he’s been trying not to think about that, not when the gang is in the state it is. He can’t do goddamn shit like this, can’t hunt, can’t run jobs, can’t even guard the camp, not really, not with a bullet hole in his leg, and yet, he doesn’t know how to fix it. Doesn’t know how to pull his body out of this mangled state. The only goddamn thing that’s ever mattered to him, protecting his family. And now he isn’t even goddamn good for that.

Lenny must see something in how Arthur turns his head away, because he leans forward, says, “Listen, Arthur, we’ll—soon Dutch’ll be back, right, and things will go back to how they was. This ain’t—” And Lenny says it like he’s trying to convince himself— “This ain’t the end, alright?”

The hope in Lenny’s voice aches somewhere in Arthur’s chest.

* * *

They’re not a gang anymore, not really. With things crumbling as much as they have, how could they be? No one knows where Dutch is, not when the last Charles saw of the remnants of the bank job—Dutch, John, Javier, Bill, Micah—were getting on a boat going God knows where.

Not captured, sure, not when Charles led the law away from the rest of the gang, let them get onto the boat in the first place, and that’s something at least. If it were anyone else, Arthur might have questioned the story, thought maybe they were trying to cover their own cowardly fleeing of the law, leaving the rest to the wolves. But he finds he trusts Charles, doesn’t see that sort of thing as something the man could pull. Charles is honest, good in the sort of way Arthur had never been, and Arthur doesn’t think he’d have tracked him and Hosea down if he’d been so intent on saving his own hide. Charles did everything he could, Arthur knows that.

Still, they’re fractured, and Dutch, John, Javier, Bill, they could very well be dead.

Molly has disappeared. No wonder, not with how she’d been treated up to the bank robbery. Dutch had never been kind to a relationship he was done with, and now, with Dutch gone, there’s nothing tying her here. Arthur hopes she found something better, some life more inclined to what she wanted from Dutch, but he knows better than to expect it.

Karen is lost in the bottle more often than not. The drinking started after Sean died and now, as bad as things have gotten, there’s nothing left to stop her. Tilly and Mary-Beth, on the other hand, spend most of their time with Abigail, sometimes comforting, sometimes pushing her into routine, whatever is most appropriate. She’s been in to visit Hosea once or twice, and Arthur can see even without her speaking how much it weighs on her, Hosea being laid up like this. Last time John was gone, it was Arthur and Hosea both that helped her through it. Now, neither Arthur nor Hosea are in any state to talk, and Arthur can read the barely hidden panic and grief Abigail’s pushing just below the surface on her face no matter how much she tries to hide it. Arthur can’t even bring himself to think about John, brother he’s spent near half his life protecting only to see him disappeared, let alone give Abigail the comfort she needs.

They’re trying to keep things normal for Jack, from what Arthur has heard. Part of that, of course, is not allowing Jack to see Arthur himself. It’s by Arthur’s own insistence, partially, and also his own stubbornness in not moving from Hosea’s room. Even in a gang of outlaws, there’re some things a four-year-old shouldn’t have to see, and a man that’s as good as a grandfather to him with a festering wound in his stomach is one of them.

But, even then, there’s no normalcy here, not anymore, and Arthur is sure even Jack can tell. Pearson is cooking, brings food to Arthur every once and a while, but even the cook’s normal attitude is melancholy. Uncle too, his comments with more bite than usual, more truth to them.

Trelawny brings in money sometimes after trips into the city, the only one of them still relatively safe there, but it’s petty cash, made through magic tricks. Trelawny has some real magic, but his show tricks are all sleight of hand, and it’s safer that way, anyway. City folk are wowed by petty tricks, but real magic scares them. Better sleight of hand than robbing, though, considering how hot things are, no matter if the money from it is scarcer.

Sadie and Charles are trying their best to manage things, to keep everyone safe. Arthur is grateful to them, to Lenny, who has gone from one of the gang’s most junior members to what essentially amounts to third in command. But, there’s only so much they can do. Dutch is gone. John is gone, Javier is gone, Bill is gone. No sometimes magic-infused music around the campfire, no temperamental werewolf cheating at poker, not even a bumbling half-skunk ape drunk more often than not.

No bright leader. And they’re still goddamn nothing without Dutch.

Arthur can do nothing, nothing besides guard Hosea’s bedside, and so he waits. Waits, for Hosea to wake, or Dutch to come back, or for the Pinkertons to catch wind of them, or for the earth to start crumbling into the swamp.

Something has to give.

* * *

Hosea wakes coherent once only.

Arthur is alone with him when it happens. A vigil, it’s turned into.

The reverend has sobered with the utter destruction of the bank job, the shock of it and what it’s done to the gang. A good thing, mostly, since Swanson has some healing to him. Problem is, the healing, like any healing magic, needs to draw energy from the person being healed, and Hosea doesn’t have any to spare.

These past few days, Swanson’s been talking about putting Hosea out of his misery. Arthur had snarled when he brought it up, stood in front of Hosea’s bed with his hackles raised until Swanson had backed down, but now, looking at Hosea’s chest rise and fall in labored, shaky breaths, Arthur wonders if maybe he’s preventing the mercy of cutting the hours Hosea is in pain short. Maybe that’s why Grimshaw and Swanson have left him here, gone to tend to the other folks around camp. Grimshaw has always been fond of making Arthur take ownership of his decisions, and so may be this is it, a forced vigil permeated with the stink of rot.

A stutter in Hosea’s regular breathing rhythm is what tips Arthur off. The raspy, labored breaths have become a pattern for Arthur and when they hitch, suddenly, Arthur’s head shoots up.

Panic floods into him, expecting the worst, but what he isn’t expecting is to see Hosea’s blink open, to see his head turn to the side, to Arthur, one or two blinks of confusion before recognition breaks over his face. To hear a hoarse, slurred, “Arthur.” And then, again, “Arthur, s’you, ain’t it?”

Arthur’s on his feet in an instant. Has his paws on Hosea’s bed in another, desperate to be closer, to see eyes he thought might not open again. Tail wagging involuntarily, and Arthur doesn’t have it in him to feel embarrassed by it. And the smile it works out of Hosea, small and pained but there, makes it worth it.

He should bark, he knows, let those others in Lakay know that Hosea is awake, that this might be their only time to say goodbye to the man who’s given the gang so much.

But Arthur’s so goddamn _selfish_.

Instead, he heaves himself up on the bed, settles by Hosea’s side, regardless of the feverish warmth rolling off the man in waves, and Hosea lets him.

Hosea’s hand comes up, cups Arthur’s cheek, and Arthur watches Hosea’s eyes run down his body, resists the urge to curl away from his gaze in the way he wants to do whenever anyone looks at what he’s become. Still, how the slight smile fades away from Hosea’s face, turns to something akin to grief, makes Arthur want to flinch.

“Oh, Arthur,” Hosea’s voice comes again, soft. “’m sorry.”

It isn’t what Arthur’s expecting, and he turns his eyes back to Hosea, confused.

There’s a deep fog of fever in the man’s eyes, and maybe that explains some of it. It’s a hard ask to wake truly lucid after a week of being in and out, and with a fever still raging besides. But the sound of his voice, the pain of it, there’s something real there, and not just some sort of sympathy for the form Arthur finds himself in. Hosea is apologizing.

It doesn’t make sense, though, because what does Hosea have to be sorry for? Who knew the bank job was going to go bad, and who knew Arthur would end up in this state?

Of course, Hosea knows him too well, maybe sees the confusion in Arthur eyes, because, though his voice is still rough, unanchored, it’s almost pressing when he continues, “This is our fault, all of it. Weren’t—weren’t gonna happen without us, Arthur. Shoulda protected you.” And then, when Arthur blinks, still not understanding, “All them bullets, Arthur.”

Silver, Arthur thinks, unbidden. And then, yes, he understands.

Hadn’t he been warned by his father? Told for years that silver would kill him? They’d made a mistake, _Arthur_ ’d made a mistake, accepting Dutch’s theory that it was an old folklore exaggeration for slower healing.

Silver poisoning. Not the sort they’d thought, but poisoning all the same. Silver as poison to the core of what he is, of the parts of him that know how to change shape.

Hosea knows, he realizes. Always the cleverest among them, and Hosea has figured it out. Probably had as soon as Arthur’s shapechanging failed in that Saint Denis alley. And Arthur knows it for sure when Hosea reaches up, strokes the side of his face, says, soft and slurred, “We ruined you, my boy. We failed you.” And quieter, choked, “’m so sorry.”

Silver. Silver in Arthur’s blood, running through his veins. Strangling him from the inside, corrupting what makes him what he is. All those years, and he’s like this, stuck and mangled, because of silver.

And Hosea, bullet hole in his belly and everything, blames himself.

It sinks into him slowly. The persistent smell of rot in the air, the fever that has raged on for near a week now. The way Hosea’s cheeks are sunken, pallid, the translucent tone to his skin. The fact that, even now, Hosea’s mind, ever so clever, is distant, shaken.

Hosea is dying.

Hosea is dying, and there’s nothing Arthur can goddamn do.

“My boy,” Hosea mutters as he runs his thumb over Arthur’s fur, only it sounds like goodbye. Hosea goddamn knows it too.

Arthur’s whole chest is aching, throat so tight that, even if he could make words in this body, he doubts they could even come out.

It’s not your fault, he wants to say.

It was inevitable, he wants to say.

You were the best father I could’ve ever known, he wants to say.

I love you, he wants to say. I love you, and none of this could’ve been prevented. The silver wasn’t your doing. You couldn’t have known.

Instead, he pushes his head into Hosea’s hand, lets the man run his hand over Arthur’s mottled fur until sleep, or maybe unconsciousness, takes him into its grip again, and hopes, hopes to the deepest part of him, that Hosea understands.

* * *

Arthur sleeps that night with his head on Hosea’s lap, curled up on the bed next to him.

Sometime in the early hours, the rise and fall of Hosea’s chest stops, and doesn’t start up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: character death canonical to the game, observed from the perspective of a loved one
> 
> As much as Hosea’s death had to happen for the shape of the story, imo Lenny’s death in game was mostly for shock value for the viewer (along with shooing out the little brother figures for Arthur so Arthur could focus on John and John alone in chapter 6). Since Arthur wasn’t there to possibly observe his death in this fic and therefore the viewer wasn’t either, there was no way I was killing Lenny here. I love that kid too much.
> 
> On a lighter note,  
> Me: I love writing dialogue!  
> Also me: *writes an entire chapter where Arthur cannot speak at all*


	6. Wapiti

Arthur is familiar with death. Knows the smell of it in his nose, anywhere from the tang of blood to the nausea of decay. Has taken lives, has seen lives taken forcibly in front of him. Has lived in death, has been close to it himself.

Still, when they load Hosea’s shroud-wrapped body into the back of a wagon, Arthur can barely steel himself to lie next to him without his guts heaving, and he’s not sure if he’s going to be able to last until they get out of Lemoyne.

In the days that Hosea lay dying, Charles made contact with the Wapiti tribe, the inheriting son of which Arthur assisted near a month ago now after a chance encounter in Saint Denis. Maybe that’s why, when Charles asked, Rain Falls was willing to offer help in bringing Arthur back to his body.

The way Charles tells it, the Wapiti, like many Native tribes, have accepted the unnatural as a necessary ally. White civilization sees both Natives and magic as dangers to the structures of power they’ve set in place, and so the Wapiti have taken extra care to hang on to what knowledge of the unnatural they have or has been passed to them from other tribes. That’s why, Charles says, Rains Fall has some idea of how to fix Arthur. Wapiti shapeshifters aren’t the same as a _pwca_ , not beyond shades of similarity in weakness to silver, but it’s the closest they’re going to get outside of Wales and the native Welsh folk. It’s worth a try, according to Charles.

If Arthur had anything nearing a human voice, he’d tell Charles not to bother. That there are more important things to do than focus on him right now. But he doesn’t have a voice, and the decision isn’t his. He’s only told a day before it happens that Charles is planning to bring him north after burying Hosea, up to the Wapiti where Rains Fall will do what he can.

Arthur protests in the only way he can, by refusing to get in the wagon, but Charles knows him almost too well considering they’ve only run together less than a year, and he picks Arthur up, heaves him into it. Arthur growls, but doesn’t jump out, and he’s sure Charles knew that would be the case. He does, after all, want to be there for Hosea’s funeral.

They aren’t burying Hosea in the goddamn swamp. He’d wanted to be buried in the mountains. In the mountains, or with friends, the man had said both. They don’t have friends to bury Hosea with, and that’s almost a relief, seeing what having more bodies to bury would mean, but they can sure as hell get Hosea’s body up near enough the mountains to satisfy the first wish. It makes sense, of course. Charles is heading that way anyway, and he’s decided Arthur’s coming as well. They can give Hosea the grave he deserves, away from the hellhole that is Saint Denis.

Swanson and Grimshaw ride alongside them, but only going far as where they decide to bury Hosea. They’ve left the camp in the care of Sadie and Lenny, and it’s clear that Susan doesn’t trust that the camp won’t crumble in her absence.

Arthur disagrees. The kid’s ready for it, Arthur thinks, ready to take the responsibility of care of the camp alongside Sadie. Both of them green to outlawing but still know the pain of loss, know how to care for the ones they love. He would trust the lives left in their hands any day, and he knows they’re a good fit to continue protecting camp, even when Miss Grimshaw returns.

But, it isn’t like Arthur’s opinion had been asked, anyway. His mangled body robs him of his voice all the same.

* * *

They bury Hosea around sunset on the edge of New Hanover, where the mountains of Ambarino first start to rise.

Despite Charles’s protests, Arthur helps him and Swanson dig. It tears up his paws, not meant for this much digging even if he was in one form rather than mixed between them, but he doesn’t care. He can’t carve a headstone, couldn’t protect Hosea, couldn’t tell Hosea goodbye, but he can do this. Can give his blood to make Hosea’s final resting place a soft one. And he watches as Charles, Swanson, and Grimshaw all heave dirt back over Hosea’s cloth wrapped body, burying him completely.

It’s a long time, sitting at the edge of the churned earth, before Arthur can bring himself to get back in the wagon.

* * *

Arthur has been to this part of Ambarino only once. He’d been tracking an elk off a map Hosea’d given him and had seen the smoke rising from over the river. At the time, he’d observed the reservation from a distance, more curious than anything else. It hadn’t been a place for him, though, and he’d left it be.

Now, he’s seeing it up close, and the uneasy feeling only grows. It’s the sort of place that Arthur brings danger to, and, yet, the folks here want to help him, have invited him, even. That doesn’t sit well in his stomach.

After Charles stops the wagon, says his greetings, Rains Fall takes one look at Arthur before ushering him into one of the tipis, letting the hide flaps fall closed behind them.

He’s made to drink something. Rains Fall tells him it’s something to draw the silver out and away, or that’s what the old man’s been told by those who taught him, but it could be just as much to numb the pain of the transformation back.

“I have only seen this done once, when I was young,” Rains Fall says to Arthur as he settles back on his haunches, waiting for the drink to kick in or for the bitter taste to fade from his mouth, whatever comes first. “If that was any indication, it won’t be pleasant.”

Arthur wants to laugh, because isn’t that typical, by now? Instead he catches Charles’s eye, sees the quirk of his lips and brightness in his eyes, and warmth flutters in Arthur’s chest.

The amusement doesn’t last, however, not when at just that moment, Arthur’s stomach lurches.

“Lie him down,” Rains Fall says, and it’s not a moment too soon, because even as Charles jumps forward, helps Arthur down onto his belly, Arthur finds himself gagging, retching in great dry heaves as his body tries to reject whatever it was he drank. Nothing comes up, though, not even when his stomach feels like it’s about ready to burst.

“Listen to me, Mr. Morgan,” Rains Fall says, catching Arthur’s face and directing it towards his own. “Think of your true self. Find it inside of you. We cannot do this for you, but we can help you along.”

Easy enough to say, Arthur thinks, because he doesn’t know what the hell that even means. There’s a fire in his stomach now, and he has an image, briefly, of the silver solidifying in his chest, carving through anything in its way to burrow into his belly in one large mass.

A spark starts in the corner of his vision, and then a creeping darkness, engulfing Arthur bit by bit.

“Make peace who you are, Arthur Morgan,” Rains Fall’s voice comes, echoing as if over a long distance. “Find that peace within yourself.”

And then black.

Deep, disorienting black, near suffocating in its completeness. He can’t see anything, can’t feel anything. Arthur’s heart is going something fierce in his chest, and it’s the only thing echoing in his ears.

Thumping, thumping, thumping—

And then something—a wolf, black and golden-eyed, like Arthur’s father—lunges at Arthur from the darkness, jaws stretched wide. Arthur doesn’t even have time to stumble backwards before the wolf is on top of him, snapping towards his throat.

He’s expecting teeth, has felt enough of them in his time, but this isn’t teeth. This is being plunged into ice cold water, like when he pulled John from a half-frozen lake on a particularly bad full moon.

It hurts, the kind of pain that sinks in his bones and chills in his core. Splinters of ice, biting through his skin, making his chest tight. And the _fear_ , the fear of hurt Arthur had gone so long thinking he’d forgotten.

His hands are on the wolf’s throat before he realizes it, caught up in the fur and loose skin. It _hurts_ , and all he goddamn wants is for the hurting to stop.

But suddenly, a voice is echoing in his ears. Or a memory—Hosea’s voice from so long ago, a conversation Arthur had overheard. _We’ve turned into a bunch of killers_ , the man said, snapped words meant for Dutch. _We’ve ruined you, my boy_.

It’s now Hosea’s throat Arthur’s hands are wrapped around and the man’s face is already turning blue, his hands scrabbling at Arthur’s own, white at the knuckles with how tight they’re clenched.

The realization sparks horror through Arthur’s stomach, and he’s stumbling away, falling hard to his ass on the ground below him. It bites into his palms like gravel, a sharp burn against his skin, and his heels drag tracks in the darkness. He still scrambles backwards, wanting more distance, an ache in his throat like it was the one choked, until his hands hit water.

He turns, and a lake spreads away from him. Deep, reflective water, glinting in some non-existent sunlight. Impossibly broad, impossibly deep. He doesn’t want to look, is afraid of what he might see, but rolls to his hands and knees, peers into the water at his reflection anyway.

It’s him, human. What exists at his core, Arthur isn’t sure, but he does recognize himself. Scarred face, beard cut close to his skin but scruffy despite it. Blood spattered across his skin, smeared along his lips, speckling his cheeks. If he bared his teeth, he knows the blood would be there too, lifeblood caught up from someone’s torn throat. 

The ugly face of a killer.

He wants to dash a hand across the water, make it vanish, but he can’t make himself. Because it’s him, still, human, the only way he can get out of this. The only way he’s useful, not stuck in some beastly form.

He’s still looking at his own face when ripples mar the surface of the lake, and he looks up.

Crossing the water towards him is a deer.

A stag, almost golden, with full antlers that stretch up to impossibly sharp points. Tall, the biggest Arthur might’ve ever seen, lifting long legs gracefully through the water.

Arthur doesn’t know why, but the sight of the thing makes him shiver.

The stag stops in front of him, close enough that he could reach out and touch it. He doesn’t, however, not even when it drops its head, looks at Arthur with deep, green eyes. And that seems strange enough, as does the growing feeling of warmth that spreads through Arthur’s skin.

Still, he doesn’t realize just what the stag is until it dips its head further and bumps its nose against Arthur’s chest.

 _We could start again, Arthur_.

This is the last time he’ll get this chance, Arthur thinks.

The world snaps back into place.

The first thing Arthur’s aware of is a ringing in his ears. Then his stomach heaves, and he’s vomiting onto the dirt in a splatter of liquid. Warm palms touch his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, keeping him from falling face first into his own sick, and Arthur realizes they’re Charles’s hands at the same time he realizes there’s no fur in the way of the touches.

He’s back. Back, and goddamn naked.

Arthur is used to nakedness. Being what he is, he’s bared his body to every member of the gang more than once in interest of preserving clothing. Still, there’s something too vulnerable about it, the way Charles takes hold of the sweaty skin of his arm, hauls him up to weak and shaking legs.

They manage to usher him into a tent before sleep drags Arthur under its talons.

* * *

Arthur goes in and out.

It’s exhaustion, pure and simple. Or, at least, that’s what he overhears in snatches of conversation around him, swirling and thrumming in his head. Changing takes a lot out of him, and it wasn’t like he was sleeping well in his twisted body. What little he had left of his endurance had gotten him back to human. After that, there was nothing left.

Charles is always there. In whispers of words, in metal cups being lifted to his lips, in soft touches to his forehead, hands. Arthur can barely even open his own eyes, but he feels Charles’s warmth beside him, and the feeling of it runs hot through his skin.

In one of his brief moments of wakefulness, Arthur finds himself saying, “You ain’t have t’—t’stay. I ain’t—”

Arthur isn’t even sure how he’s planning to end the sentence, but a chuckle from Charles interrupts him, and he finds himself squinting up at the man in annoyance. It doesn’t help things, just makes Charles’s laugh deeper.

“I’m not leaving, Arthur. Not when you can’t even move.” And then, quieter, “Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t walk right out and get yourself killed.”

Arthur wants to say something biting back, something about how Charles learned too much from Hosea in their brief time together, but he’s under again before he can form the words.

* * *

Arthur blinks his eyes open to gray light, feeling better rested than he has in ages, since well before Blackwater. It’s a foreign feeling, but what isn’t foreign is the ache all over his body, settled deep in his bones.

There are consequences, it seems, even to fixing himself.

He must make a noise, because Charles’s voice sounds beside him, asking, “Arthur? You with me?”

“Christ alive,” Arthur murmurs, and blinks a couple times. “Sure, I guess.”

“Sore?”

“Mmnn,” Arthur hums, rubbing a hand over his eyes, and Christ, even that hurts, especially when he realizes his fingertips are still scraped raw from digging Hosea’s grave.

Charles, apparently, is undeterred. “Can you sit up? Oughta drink some water.”

“Give me a minute.”

It takes some effort, but eventually Arthur turns his head, rests his eyes on Charles. And when he does, he can’t help squinting at the sight that greets him.

Charles has cut his hair. Or, not all of it—just shaved either sides of his head down so the skin of his scalp was showing, leaving one stripe of hair down the middle. What’s left is gathered into a long braid, one that runs down his back.

Arthur blinks again. “Been how long?”

Charles pours water into a metal cup next to Arthur, only sparing him a glance. “Since you came back? Three days, give or take.”

“Your hair?”

That gets Charles to look up at him, and there’s something Arthur can’t read in his eyes. Something sad, almost, or purposeful, or something in between. It’s only a few seconds before the other man turns away, but it feels like a lifetime. Charles thinks before he speaks, and Arthur respects that, but goddamn does it turn time endless. Still, he finally says, quietly, “The Wapiti warriors, this is one of the ways they wear their hair.”

Arthur blinks again. “But you’re…?”

 _Ours_ , Arthur wants to say, meaning part of the family. But what family was there left? Dutch gone, Hosea dead, the folks left scattered and grieving.

Charles rolls his shoulders, and he’s back to not looking at Arthur. “The people here, they’re suffering. The army wants to move them, push them out of land they’ve already been forced into. It’s no kind of life.”

“They need help,” Arthur says, and it doesn’t surprise him. Charles has always been a better person than Arthur could even hope to be, the type to only use violence when it was absolutely necessary. Good to his core.

Charles goes to tuck a lock of hair behind his ears, finds the hair shaved off, and the movement stutters in the air. “I don’t know how long it’ll take. But with Dutch gone—not like we’re doing much robbing now, anyway.”

It makes sense, is the thing. That doesn’t make the idea of it any less of an ache in Arthur’s chest, and he can’t even define why. This is a world not for Arthur, and yet they’ve accepted Charles with little fuss, and Charles deserves the acceptance. He won’t bring hurt to the spaces he enters.

He isn’t looking at Charles, and yet Charles keeps talking anyway. “The chief, he lost his eldest son, and the way Eagle Flies talks, he’s on track to lose a second. He’s got it in his head that there’s glory in dying violently, rising up against those threatening his tribe.”

That, Arthur can speak to. “Ain’t no glory in death,” he says, and he knows that to his core. “Just hurt, and that’s all of it.”

And then, Arthur’s crossing his arms over his face, because the words are bubbling up from his throat, coming unbidden from his mouth. It doesn’t prevent them, doesn’t stop him muttering, “Had a son, once.”

He doesn’t know why he says it. Hasn’t had Isaac and Eliza on his mind in a long time, so used to shoving them memory of them so deep he could pretend it doesn’t exist. Doesn’t know why he’s telling Charles, of all people, someone he’s only known the better part of a year.

But still, like water loosed from a pump, “Little speck of a shapechanger. His mother wrote me a letter all panicked ‘cause her son done turned into the cat. Isaac, was his name, an’ his mother was this waitress named Eliza. Ain’t even known I put a baby in her until the letter. Tried to convince her to come with the gang, that it was safer there. She didn’t listen, and I was too much a coward to leave an’ live with them. Some government hunters got wind of them, what Isaac was. Eliza died tryin’ to protect him, and the kid got goddamn killed anyway. Ain’t no goddamn glory in that.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Charles says, and the genuine tone in his voice, the pity, makes Arthur’s eyes burn.

He blinks, but feeling doesn’t go away. Neither do the words. “Ain’t thought of him in a long time. Ain’t—ain’t wanted to. Always wanted me t’be a deer for him. Loved ‘em things.”

“You didn’t?”

“Ain’t ever needed one, and it seemed too dangerous.” And Arthur hates how his voice cracks when he says, “Regretted it.”

He can’t help the hands that go over his face, and Charles’s voice is low when he asks, “Are you alright?”

“No,” Arthur says, and it feels like the truth.

He can feel Charles’s eyes on him, even without looking, and he can feel when Charles turns away. Feels, deep in his head, that this was a mistake. That this is too vulnerable, too pity inducing, opening himself up like this.

What he isn’t expecting, though, is for Charles to start speaking, quiet, hesitatingly. “My mother, she—she had a connection to animals. Not like you, but she could understand them, in a way I haven’t seen any other person since. My father said it was a spark, inherited from her parents. I—I wouldn’t know. But she taught me tracking, how to find animals, and how to respect them.”

And Charles’s head dips, and the hesitation is near startling to Arthur. “The government raided my mother’s tribe. I was young, and my mother and father managed to get us away, but they were looking for anyone with the unnatural. They caught up to us a few years later, and took her away. We never found out where.”

“Jesus,” Arthur mutters, and it’s loud in the space of the tipi.

“My father, it ruined him. Made him turn to the bottle, and I only took that kind of life a few years before I was done with it. This world—this world is full of loss, and I’m sick of it. There are people who deserve to live good lives, who don’t get to live them out through the actions of cruel men. I’m not… I’m tired of it. Life’s always confused me, but I—that I know. That I’m not gonna stand for the suffering anymore.”

Arthur might not know Charles all that well, considering, but he knows the look of someone catching themselves after having gone too far, exposed themselves too much in their own eyes. Charles dips his head further, titled away from Arthur, and brings his hand to the back of his neck as he says, “I, uh—I didn’t mean—I’m sorry to—to complain.”

And that isn’t what Arthur wants, ‘cause all this spilling their guts thing was his mistake in the first place, and he wants—almost needs—Charles to know that it isn’t unwelcome, Arthur knowing who he is. He rolls his shoulders, regardless of how awkward it is on the ground, says, “Ain’t complainin’, not when you just listened to my sorry ass.”

Charles’s shoulders ease, which is about as much as Arthur can hope for, and he says, “It’s the way of the world, it seems. You should—you should have that water.”

And Arthur can’t fight that. It takes some effort, some grunting and groaning, muscles unused to working after this long stagnant, but he manages to sit up, to accept the cup Charles presses in his hand.

Charles’s eyes have turned critical, appraising, and when Arthur raises his eyebrows in a question, Charles asks, “How’re you feeling?”

“Miserable,” Arthur replies. “I’ll live, though.”

“Rains Fall wanted to be clear you knew it wasn’t a cure. The silver is still there, or most of it. There’s no guarantee the same thing won’t happen again.”

“Figured s’much,” Arthur murmurs back. He knows, by now, that there are no miracle cures.

There’s quiet, for a time. Arthur hasn’t had the time up until now to really observe the reservation, not when he was ushered into Rains Fall’s tipi so quickly, and has been sleeping on and off until now. Most of what he can take in are sounds, what with the flaps of the tipi closed, but they’re still loud in his ears. Talking, men and women and children, quiet and familiar. The scraping of stones, the crackling of fires, chopping of wood. Somewhere, distant, music.

Here Arthur is, body, _his body_ , here to hear it, to smell the wood smoke on the air. To be reminded, however faintly, of his family, of the camp that had become his home. And none of it, none would’ve happened without Charles.

Finally, “Why?” Arthur asks, a question that has been burning in his head since Charles loaded him into the wagon. And then, to clarify when Charles’s brow scrunches, “Why all this?”

“All what, Arthur?”

“Bein’ here. Talkin’ to Rains Fall. Doin’ it—doin’ it for me.” Because Charles saved him, plain and simple. There would’ve been no coming out of this mess if it weren’t for Charles. He and Hosea both would’ve died in that swamp, or Arthur would’ve been stuck as something twisted forever.

What Arthur is expecting is to hear that it was a side thought, a symptom of Charles wanting already to work with the Wapiti. Rains Fall had met Arthur, after all, maybe asked why he hadn’t been there when Charles made contact, once he learned Charles was associated with the same gang. The man must’ve offered his knowledge, that’s all, in exchange for Charles’s work for them, aiding them in their struggle against the Army.

But Charles tilts his head, and when the words come, they aren’t what Arthur is expecting at all. “Because—because you matter to me,” he says, voice almost hesitant.

It’s a gentle thing, and still Arthur finds himself caught out. Raw and flayed, shirtless with a water cup wrapped in his fingers. For one short, near electric moment, his eyes meet Charles’s, green on brown. And then Arthur glances away, because the feeling in his chest can’t bear the gaze one moment longer. Mutters, “S’a stupid thing t’care about, Charles.”

“No,” says Charles. “It’s not. Believe that, Arthur, if nothing else.”

Arthur wants to believe him, Christ he does. The honesty in Charles’s voice is near painful, and Arthur knows Charles sees right through him.

* * *

It’s not a week later that Lenny comes riding up to the reservation, asking for Arthur and Charles. The kid’s eyes are bright when he says, “Dutch is back.”

There isn’t much Arthur can do while his body recovers, builds up lost muscle, but he’s still been doing what he can to pull his own weight, especially since the bullet wound in his thigh has faded to no more than a dull twinge. The Wapiti are as much in hot water as Charles has told him, and it’s easy enough to run a few light tasks, make things easier on the tribe in repayment for what Rains Fall did for him. 

Still, when Dutch beckons, Arthur can’t help but respond, especially when Lenny explains—Milton caught up with them not long after the rest of the men got back, tore up the camp with a goddamn Gatling gun. They’ve moved to another camp now, up on Roanoke ridge.

More running, in other words. Arthur can see it on Lenny’s face, that the camp unsettles even him and his optimism. And so Arthur turns towards the tipi they’ve been allowed to live in for the past week and a half, even as he starts, “Charles, are we—?”

But he pauses. He’d been intended to ask if they were leaving now or in the morning, up until he sees the look on Charles’s face. He knows, without asking, what that look is saying, but he says it anyway, says, “You’re stayin’ here.”

“Yes,” Charles says, and it hits somewhere in Arthur’s gut.

It’s not surprising, of course. Arthur should have seen it coming, even. Charles wants to help people rather than hurt them, and the gang has only been hurting people lately. But still—he hasn’t ever known someone like Charles, and the thought of him leaving makes an ache start up in Arthur’s throat.

Charles sees it in Arthur’s eyes, maybe, because his shoulders drop, and he says, “Listen, I—I can’t—Dutch is…”

Charles doesn’t need to finish the sentence for Arthur to know what he means. Back in Colter, Charles had once said when he and Arthur were hunting that he joined up with the gang because Dutch was different. Arthur suspects now the same sentence would not have the same connotations.

“It’s alright,” Arthur says, because he can’t bear the thought of defining the wrongness that has been circling Dutch, his decisions. Micah in his ear. And there’s no way he’s making Charles go back to that.

It’s Lenny who looks between them and asks, careful, “Dutch—Dutch’ll ask, though.”

“Tell him the truth, then. He’s the one always going on about saving people that need saving. The people here need help.”

Somehow, Arthur thinks that isn’t going to work. Not for Dutch and his eye for opportunity.

* * *

“You could stay,” Charles says, almost too late. Arthur has already saddled the Hungarian Halfbred gifted to him by Rains Fall. He doesn’t dare shift, not now, not when he just regained himself, when he’s been told he’s not cured. Best to save it for only the vital uses.

It might be an invitation, except for the desperate edge to Charles’s voice, the one that makes it more like a plea.

“Stay?” Arthur asks, because the thought never even crossed his mind, never even considered the possibility of defying Dutch.

And Charles looks at him straight, brown eyes steady as he strokes one hand down the mare’s neck. “You’re a good man, Arthur. There’d be a place for you here.”

There’s something here, Arthur thinks. Something that could be nurtured, if Arthur stayed. Not necessarily with the Wapiti, since Arthur still holds that this isn’t his place, as much as Charles might claim it is. He could get by, sure, be accepted by them for the unnatural that has touched his core, but he’d never be part of them in the same way Charles already seems to be. No, there’s something with Charles. Something soft, something Arthur can’t even put words to for fear of the hurt under it all.

But Arthur can’t. When Dutch beckons, Arthur comes. It’s not even just about Dutch anymore, has never just been about Dutch, not with John, Abigail, Jack, Tilly, Susan, Lenny, so many others.

“There are folks, Charles.” Arthur doesn’t elaborate, but he knows Charles understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is meant to echo the mission in Chapter 6 in game where Rains Fall helps Arthur by giving him herbs to ease his cough. Since Arthur’s silver poisoning takes the place of TB in this fic, instead we have him helping Arthur come out of his glitchily shifted state. Not totally satisfied with that section of this chapter, but I’ve played with it too long and just need to stop touching it. I'm very much interested in marginalized communities finding solidarity with each other, but I'm not sure if that came across. 
> 
> I really wish Rains Fall could have had a larger role in this fic, because I think he’s a really interesting and complicated character, but unfortunately there’s only so much I can include without affecting pacing/rehashing the conversations in the game and so he comes off as one dimensional because of that. In general, I’d imagine him and Arthur had some of the same conversations in this AU, just they aren’t written out. What little he does say here (for instance, the bits about Arthur needing to find peace within himself) are sentiments pulled from the game.


	7. Beaver Hollow

Arthur isn’t exactly expecting a warm welcome, but his return to camp is cold regardless.

Unlike the unity Arthur had expected with Dutch’s return, the gang is falling apart. There’s a tension in the air, one that makes everyone stalk around camp like dogs with their hackles raised. The whole thing’s a powder keg, and Arthur’s not sure who’s going to drop a match.

Still, the way Javier and Bill look at him, it’s all colder than he was expecting. Micah, sure, that makes sense, seeing as Micah is trying so much to take over Arthur’s position by Dutch’s side, maybe has already succeeded, but Bill and Javier had been friends, and now they were acting like Arthur was out ratting on them.

Why only becomes clear a little later.

* * *

“Dutch thinks you betrayed him,” John says, and it’s sudden. Both in sentiment, and timing.

They’re hauling dynamite crates out of a wagon John has parked behind Bacchus Station. This is Dutch’s newest plan, to blow the bridge and stop an Army train that will be passing through with a whole heap of supplies, gold included. This is the first time he’s been alone with John since getting back, and it seems John intends to use the privacy.

Arthur pauses, the weight of the dynamite in his arms seeming to grow heavier, and he wishes he had a cigarette. There’s this heavy knot forming in his chest, something like a confirmed suspicion, but with an ache deep down. He’s not surprised, even with the suddenness, not with how Dutch has been acting, but it still stings, the thought that Dutch could think that of him.

John is telling him for a reason, though. “An’ you?”

John snorts. “Course not. Micah thinks there’s a rat, though, and he’s the one in Dutch’s ear. Reckon he’s the one rattin’, if anythin’, only ain’t no way I’m tryin’ t’convince Dutch a’that. But he thinks—thinks the reason you ain’t got killed like Hosea was ‘cause you saved your own skin and sold him out, that day at the bank.”

And that, _that_ hurts hard. Arthur can’t help his head jerking up to look at John. “He really believe that?”

“I dunno,” John says, and it’s with frustration. “It ain’t like he’s tellin’ me nothin’, just Micah. But it’s Micah spoutin’ this bullshit. I an’ I get it, ‘cause we keep runnin’ into bad turn after bad turn, but—but to think you, of all people? Gettin’ _Hosea_ killed?”

Arthur inclines his head. “Might as well have. Only took him quiet ‘cause they had a gun to my head.”

“Christ sakes, Arthur, that ain’t what I mean and you know it,” John snaps. “I just don’t see why—Dutch, Dutch is—”

Dutch is different. That’s the core of it, isn’t it? Charles had said it, John is saying it. John’s anger has always been fiery and indignant, the sort of man who ran so hot it overflowed. The bitterness, too, that is intrinsic to John, and Arthur’s own reflection of it was one of the many reasons they fought so often when they were younger, and the way they couldn’t make up after John left.

But John is smart too, Arthur knows, as much as he jokes otherwise, smart in the way of the streets, and he notices things. And he wouldn’t be saying Dutch had changed without good cause to do so.

Christ, but Arthur doesn’t want to confront it. John, maybe seeing his hesitation, plows forward. “He killed a woman, Arthur, on that island. She was askin’ him for more money, and when he ain’t wanted to pay up, he strangled her. Tried to tell me she was gonna betray us, rat us out. He forgets I been around Javier enough to know what goddamn _dinero_ means.”

“Killed a woman on that boat, too.” It seems so long ago now, trying to glean what little information he could about the Blackwater robbery, thinking it seemed wrong, that this story of Dutch shooting a girl didn’t sound like him.

Still fresh enough for John, though, judging by the bitter way he spits on the ground. “Don’t remind me,” he says. “Been a lotta killin’ lately, ain’t there? And not just killin’.”

“Left Hosea behind, left Lenny,” Arthur mutters, a thought that had been nudging at him since that bank job, and John’s head snaps up as he looks over at Arthur.

“Left _you_ , Arthur. You know how much we goddamn told him to send someone out lookin’ for you when Colm had you? An’ did Dutch do a goddamn thing? No. Hosea, he was about ready t’send me an’ Charles out to find you, only you managed to do it yourself, and ended up nearly dead. Whole goddamn mess of a thing. And Dutch, he would’ve let you die.”

Arthur finds himself clenching his jaw, looking out toward the northern horizon. From here, he can see the smoke rising from the Wapiti Reservation.

Dutch didn’t take Charles’s staying with the tribe as intended. Instead, he saw the Wapiti as an opportunity, one more way to stick it to the government, to cause chaos for his symbols of civilization. When Lenny told Dutch where Charles was, Dutch’d thought it akin to having an inside man. He hadn’t said so much aloud, but Arthur knows Dutch, and knows that’s what he was thinking. It was always about the plan, how he could use the folks around him to his advantage.

Arthur had thought, with Dutch back, things would be better, more unified. The gap that had been in him since Hosea’s death would seal over. That they might go back to how they were, helping people, taking from the rich only to give to the folks that need it most. A haven for folks who were different, unnatural or otherwise. Standing up against civilization.

He knows, now, that all it was was wishful thinking. That they haven’t been that in a long time.

They are dying.

John is still fuming, looking about ready to kick over one of the dynamite crates laying near forgotten on the ground. When Arthur is quiet, he snaps, “He’s gonna abandon all ‘a us, one of these days, an’ how am I supposed to be goddamn loyal knownin’ that?”

“Be loyal to what matters,” Arthur says, and the words surprise even him. That’s the core of it though. The gang, it doesn’t matter anymore, not in how it had. What matters are the people in it, those that have become family, that don’t deserve to lose their lives to this.

John jerks his head up, and peers at Arthur suspiciously. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Arthur shrugs his shoulders, feeling the tiredness tug at his muscles. “When the time comes, Abigail, Jack, you get them out. Run, and don’t look back. Ain’t nothin’ much else that matters.”

* * *

“I suspect they’ll write a paper about you, dear boy,” Trelawny says. “’The Long-Term Effects of Silver on a Shapechanging Beast’.”

He doesn’t say it to be cruel. The suitcase in his hand, maybe that’s cruel, but not his words. Trelawny is leaving, and, for all his trickery, magic real and faked, he isn’t lying. Arthur knows this, just the same as he knows the fire running under his skin.

“’On a Monster’, more like,” he corrects, and Trelawny inclines his head.

The camp is quiet, and maybe that’s why Trelawny picked this particular time. He’d always liked to slip in and out of their life like an ungrounded spirit. Once, Arthur distrusted him for it, thought it was proof he would just as soon turn them in to save himself. Now, though, he finds himself regarding Trelawny as just one more piece of their odd group, and one that deserves just as much as the rest to find a safe end.

“I’ll see you soon,” Trelawny says, but it comes through hollow.

Arthur finds himself tilting his head. “Perhaps.”

“I’ll be back.” The lie in the words would be clear even if it hadn’t showed through in Trelawny’s voice. The man is skilled in deception, years of being a magician without even using the very real magic at his core, but, it seems, even trickery is beyond him, as deep as this thing has gone. 

“Let’s not pretend no more,” Arthur says. “This is pretty much over. If I were you, I’d be far from here already.”

Now that, _that_ seems to pause Trelawney in gathering his things. He looks up at Arthur steadily, and the sincerity is back in his voice when he says, “I’ll miss you, Arthur. You’ve been a fine friend to me.”

“Naw, I ain’t worth the sentiment. Now, get out of here. You go with my blessin’.”

Trelawny is the first to go. It makes sense, of course. The man has always been able to smell blood on the wind. He’s not the last, not by far.

* * *

By the time they hit the oil fields, they’re down to John and his family, Sadie, Javier, Bill, Micah, Tilly, Susan, and Dutch himself. Charles is there to help them with the fight, pretty much forced to by Eagle Flies and his self-destructive energy, but he isn’t planning to return at all after this, Arthur knows.

Pearson, Swanson, and Uncle all disappeared in the night. Arthur himself talked Lenny into leaving with Karen and Mary-Beth, worried otherwise that Karen might damn well drink herself to death and Lenny would get himself killed when the gang collapsed. Mary-Beth can handle herself, but he needs her to handle the other two as well, at least for a little while. They’re all young, young enough to start new lives, and Arthur damn well hopes they will.

And, still, the world isn’t done taking from those who don’t deserve it.

Without his changing to fall back on, Arthur finds himself clumsier than he’d like. His eye with a gun is still strong, sure, but in the chaos of the oil fields, there’s only so much even that can help. His way out of being cornered had always been the beasts at his fingertips and now, with the silver poisoning and the risk of maltransformation, trying an animal is more a risk than a boon.

It means, when he gets caught up in steam from a broken pipe and one of the guards gets a gun on him, he can’t weasel his way out of it.

It isn’t Dutch that saves him, despite the fact that Dutch is the only one even in a position _to_ save him. In fact, Dutch looks straight at him before turning his back, retreating out the door. And that hurts, but hurts even more when Eagle Flies bursts through the door, kills the man threatening Arthur and gets shot for his troubles.

The bullet blows apart his left leg, and even from a cursory glance, Arthur can see the bone is mangled. He shoots the guard who did it, but Eagle Flies goes down anyway, and the amount of blood is staggering.

He ignores Dutch gathering them back up after the raid, instead rides the boy back to the Wapiti reservation. And a boy he is, not much older than Sean had been, and equally undeserving of the prospect of having his life cut short. Charles and Paytah ride alongside them, the hoofbeats thundering, but, even then, he can hear the gasping breaths of Eagle Flies on the horse behind him, and each echoes in his ears.

Arthur finds himself all furious energy as Rains Fall and his fellows try their best to save Eagle Flies’ life. Pacing back and forth in the dirt outside the tipi, thoughts confusing and overwhelming.

It’s Charles, eventually, who comes to him, takes one look at him and draws him over toward the horses where the Halfbred he hasn’t named yet is grazing with her former herdmates. “Arthur?” he says, and his voice is low, almost soothing.

“I don’t—what’s goddamn wrong with him?”

“With who?”

“ _Dutch_ ,” Arthur says, and even he’s surprised at how angry the words come out. “This—this is his goddamn doin’. Startin’ this whole thing in the first place, and then—he, he left, Charles. Saw me on the ground with a gun on me and just turned around and left, and Eagle Flies may be dyin’ for it. John—John was sayin’ he was different, but—but, I ain’t—”

Arthur cuts himself off with a frustrated noise. There’s too much in his brain, and nothing is coming out coherently. Instead, he looks towards Charles, who has a look on his face that usually means he has something to say. “What’re you thinkin’?”

It’s a moment before Charles speaks, glancing away from Arthur and back in the time between. His voice is careful when it comes, almost as if he’s worried for Arthur’s reaction. “I think you scare him.”

It takes Arthur a good few seconds to process the words, and, even then, he finds himself confused. “What?”

“You scare him, Arthur.” Charles repeats, and then, “Dutch, I mean. He doesn’t—doesn’t think he can order you around anymore.”

Again, “What—what do you mean?”

Charles breathes in deep, says, “A man like Dutch gets used to power. Now, I’d guess he’s wondering just what would happen if that power turned on him. You, John. There’s a lot of destruction in wild beasts, and Dutch is thinking he isn’t at the reins anymore.”

“I—” Arthur starts, finds the words won’t come out. Wipes his mouth and tries again, and hates the tone his voice takes when he says, “But me, John, we wouldn’t ever. Marston mighta run once, but he don’t have betrayal in him, not that kind.”

“You’ve said yourself, Arthur, that this all is pretty much over with. What would you do if Dutch turned on John and Abigail? Didn’t let them leave?”

Arthur sucks in a breath of air, and the shudder it sends through him is almost frightening. “Goddamn it,” he mutters, and then, “I’m gettin’ ‘em out, Charles. Goddamn, I’m gettin’ ‘em out if it’s the last thing I do.”

Arthur stays long enough to hear that Eagle Flies will likely live, but with his left leg beyond the knee amputated. Not a death in glory like he had hoped, but a wound that leaves him unable to move in the same way, and laid up at least until the leg heals. As much as Arthur knows that the death Eagle Flies had planned would not be as glorious as he expected it to be, the fate left to the man still makes his stomach twinge.

After, it’s time for Arthur to leave. Charles, once again, sees him off.

“They’re going north,” Charles tells him, helping him tack up. “There’s nothing left they can do but run, with the way the Army is going to react to what happened.”

“Sounds familiar,” Arthur says, and then, “You goin’ with ‘em?”

Arthur knows what the answer will be, but the breath of air Charles takes, like it was a hard decision, still surprises him. “Yes.”

Arthur peers around the mare, meeting Charles’s eyes. He opens his mouth, has to clear his throat before he says, “Reckon this is it, huh?”

Arthur’s voice still cracks unexpectedly, and he finds his eyes burning. Charles takes a step closer, says, “Be well, Arthur.”

“Gonna—” Arthur starts— “Gonna goddamn miss you.”

And then Charles is wrapping Arthur into an embrace. And Arthur barely has enough time to process that, to wrap his arms around Charles the same, when, “You’re a good man, Arthur Morgan,” Charles says in his ear.

It’s warm, Charles’s body against his. Like this, Arthur could pull his head back, lean in and kiss him.

The thought is surprising, a sudden realization of something that has been burning in him for a long time. Not uncomfortable, though, except for the weight in Arthur’s stomach that knows that anything coming of it is an impossibility.

If it were different, Arthur thinks, he’d stay. Find a life with Charles included, raise the embers of this thing between them until it was blazing. Forget the outlaw life, and focus what years they have left in helping those who need it, those like them.

But he can’t, not when he knows what comes next, knows there’s still people left to get out, and the likely end looming on the horizon. He knows what it is to lose those that matter most, and that’s not a sort of pain he would wish on anyone, least of all again on Charles.

“Take care of yourself, Charles,” he says instead, chin resting on Charles’s shoulder, and the words feel bitter in his throat.

* * *

When John gets shot off the train, Arthur is goddamn sure he’s dead. After all, when had the Pinkertons not used silver bullets when fighting the Van der Linde gang?

He doesn’t know if he’s ever been so relieved to have been wrong. It’s not like that relief lasts, though, not when in not much more time he and John are scrambling out of Beaver Hollow, Susan Grimshaw’s bleeding body, Pinkerton bullets, and those that stand with Dutch left behind them.

They stop to catch their breath just over the river, the sound of Pinkertons still loud from Beaver Hollow, and Arthur turns to John.

“Listen to me, John, Sadie’s with Abigail and Jack at Copperhead Landing. You need to get them and go.” Arthur’s caught on his own words, on the desperation, but John doesn’t seem to hear him right.

“We’ll both get them, alright?” John says instead, and turns away from Arthur.

But Arthur grabs at John’s shoulder, starts, “No, John, goddamnit, I—” and then cuts off, not sure how to word it.

There’s something not right, and not just that Dutch has turned on them. In the back of his brain, the memory of Micah shooting Susan repeats, and repeats, and there’s something, something—

There’s a specific sound, when Micah fires his gun bulletless. It’s a hollow, empty sound, the clap of air against air, closer to the crack of a whip than a bullet. As devastating as a bullet, of course, since Micah likely wanted it that way and put in the time to train his magic for it, but not the same.

That wasn’t what Arthur heard, back in that clearing. No, the pop was something Arthur knew well, had heard it so often he was used to it. With a hard numbness in his stomach, Arthur realizes that Micah’s gun is loaded, and he knows in his gut exactly what bullets the man chose for it. And Arthur knows just the same that he isn’t about to let one of those bullets pierce John’s skin.

John tries to shrug his hand off, but Arthur holds fast. “Micah’s got silver bullets in his gun. You need to go.”

And that grabs John’s attention. He peers at Arthur, something between suspicion and frustration creeping into his face. “What are you plannin’, Arthur?”

The answer, of course, is nothing, but John doesn’t need to know that. Nothing beyond getting John out to be with his family, and knowing he will do goddamn anything to reach that point. He says, sharp, “I told you not to look back, John.”

John huffs an angry breath of air, yanks his shoulder out of Arthur’s grip. “Goddamnit, Arthur, I ain’t leavin’ without—”

There’s a snapping of bushes down near the river, and something ripples under Arthur’s skin. He knows it’s coming this time. Knows there’s no avoiding it.

“We need to move,” Arthur says, and then, “John, _move_ ,” just before there’s a shout from just down the hill, and bullets snap into the clearing. Arthur is already transforming, anything to keep John safe, shield him from what Arthur knows are silver bullets, because he’s getting John out of it’s the last thing he goddamn does.

And Arthur knows he’s going to come out misshapen, malformed, even before bullets fly into the clearing and one catches him in the ribs.

He’s sent tumbling, and his form warps and shivers. Already set to war with itself, even before the silver pierced his skin. But, with the silver, it ripples over his body, mottling his fur and stretching his bones to aching proportions. Something burns in his chest and won’t quit.

Better him, he thinks, than John. But John still snarls behind him, all anger and venom and already in his wolf form, and then his teeth are in the scruff of Arthur’s neck, dragging him to his feet despite the poison in his body.

There’s no time to wait, to react, not before they’re running, but Arthur glances at the bullets’ source once, just to see who it was, the Pinkertons on their tail or those he once called family. The wild look in Micah’s eyes in the glimpse he catches through the trees tells Arthur well enough who fired the shot.

Arthur goes down at the top of the hill. His body has settled, form no longer actively changing, but still warped in a mismatched spectrum of animals. He’s having trouble breathing, though, blood soaking his fur, a fire in his chest, and eventually his legs just won’t take it.

John is human again almost instantly, and on his knees just as quick. “No, no, Arthur please, c’mon,” he’s saying, and his arms go to Arthur’s middle, trying to lift him.

But Arthur snarls, hard, and John stumbles backwards, something Arthur might call fear if he didn’t know John so well making his eyes wide. Near as quick, John’s eyebrows are snapping back down, and he’s hissing, “Christ, I just—we gotta _go_ , they’re—they’re just behind us, Arthur, can’t you hear ‘em?”

Arthur can, of course, and that’s why he knows what needs to happen. There’s no way they’re both getting out, and John isn’t the one with a silver bullet in him, the one likely warped beyond repair.

Arthur gives him a look, one he hopes is firm and unyielding, and shakes his head.

Anger flashes in John’s eyes, bright and burning, but Arthur knows him too well to not see the grief just behind it. “Arthur, you goddamn—”

John takes a step forward, his arms going towards Arthur again, but this time Arthur manages to push himself back a step backwards. 

A clear rejection, one that pauses John in his tracks, causes a flare of annoyance that snaps right out of him just as quick. John stutters, “Arthur, I—”

He rubs a hand over his mouth, and his eyes are glassy when he turns back to Arthur, kneels next him. His voice halting when tries again, says, “Tell me—tell me I’ll see you again.”

Arthur is dying, or it sure feels like he is. By all accounts, this is the last time he’ll ever see John, and he is content with that. If it means protecting John, getting him to his family, then that’s all that matters. John deserves a life, to spend time with the family he’s just learning how to appreciate, to give Jack a good father, and Abigail a good husband.

Still, something aches in his chest, seeing John like this. Knowing this is the end.

All he can manage is a growl, but he knows the meaning is clear to John.

 _Go_.

John stands. Takes a step backwards, but doesn’t go yet, not before saying, “God, I—” And John’s voice breaks, and he swipes at one of his cheeks with the back of a hand. “You’ll always be my brother, Arthur, you know that?”

Arthur knows. God, does he know.

John is gone in a flash of dark fur. Arthur heaves himself to his feet, and stands to face whatever was chasing them.

The Pinkertons can’t see in the dark, a miscalculation when fighting beasts such as Arthur or John. Nearly all the beasts Arthur has have better night vision than humans, and so, even in this amalgamation, he can see perfectly fine. It means, as much as it aches to move, he can still take them by surprise. And with that surprise, he can keep them away from John.

He’s just torn out his third Pinkerton throat when a boot catches him hard in the ribs, sends him rolling to the side, and his nose tells him who it is before he even sees him.

 _Micah_.

The fury rolls through Arthur in waves. This is the man who tore them apart, who first dripped poison into Dutch’s ear, and the goddamn smug grin on his face makes Arthur’s blood boil, makes the pain distant and loose.

He rolls onto his feet again, doesn’t even hear the words spouting from the man’s mouth for the growling that rumbles through his own. The gun in Micah’s hand doesn’t particularly concern him. He’s decided he’s dying already, and it might as well be taking the goddamn rat out with him.

He lunges forward.

The movement catches Micah off guard, and Arthur takes him down to the ground hard, the gun going skittering off the rocks. There’s a fire in Arthur’s belly, burning through his skin, and it aches in his teeth as he sinks them into Micah’s arm. The man’s shout of pain spikes a lance of satisfaction through his brain.

He manages to rip a few new scars into Micah’s skin, and he almost thinks he can get his teeth around his throat up until Micah gets a boot up between them and kicks Arthur hard. It sends him sprawling back, and this time it’s harder to gather his feet under him.

By the time he’s managed to face himself upright again, Micah has closed his fingers around the gun and is pointing it at Arthur.

“It ain’t any use, beast. How long you think you got left?”

Not long, Arthur imagines, judging by just how much of his blood is spattered on the ground around them, by the way his legs don’t seem to want to hold his weight, keep sinking him to the ground. Still, he isn’t letting Micah goddamn win. Not when there’s something burning in his chest and stomach.

He’d thought it was the silver, at first. His body trying to burn out the thing that was killing him, misshaping him, trying to protect him from it. But the warmth of it, that isn’t foreign. And the persistence, the pressing need to disappear into it, to find out what he is when he’s enveloped in it, that isn’t silver. That burning thing wants him, wants him bad, and Arthur knows that he wants it right back.

What makes him who he is, Arthur thinks. He’d been told that this was his last chance, hadn’t he?

Arthur reaches down inside himself, into that bright ball of light, and finds something different.

It explodes out of him, all hard hooves and sharp antlers and golden fur. He’s on his feet again before he knows it, sides heaving with the weight of it. A stag, he thinks, and the thought lights a fire in his brain. _What lies at his core_.

He surges forward, one fluid movement, and Micah’s standing there, stunned, unable to react before Arthur’s driving his antlers through him, piercing his chest deep.

It’s not instant, but it’s enough. Micah’s hand scrabbles at Arthur’s face, but his breath bubbles in his throat and blood drips hot down Arthur’s antlers. By the time Arthur shakes himself free, lets Micah slide off his antlers and onto the cold rock of the cliffside, Micah has gone limp, unmoving.

Goddamn dead, and a kinder death than he deserves.

And Arthur is left, breath heavy in his chest, blood trickling into the fur of his face, until the click of a gun being cocked makes him turn his head to face the man behind him.

He knows, before he turns around, who he’s going to see. Afterall, there’s just one player left unaccounted for. But still: Dutch, hair mussed, vest half-untucked, eyes wild. All disheveled mess, all panic and pain. The sight is unsettling in its truth—painfully human, because that’s all Dutch has ever been. Just a goddamn human.

Arthur’s legs give out.

There’s still a bullet nestled against his ribs, and, despite the overwhelming sense of _rightness_ in this form, his blood still stains his skin. There’s a tremble setting in all over his body, and he’s familiar with the feeling of blood loss.

He can see, out of the corner of his eye, Dutch step closer, gun held tight in the fingers of his outstretched hand. And yet, he can’t bring himself to move, to either threaten Dutch or bare his neck to him, and he isn’t even sure which he would rather do.

He does sigh though, a rush of air out of him, and it seems to loosen something in Dutch. The man jerks his hand at Arthur, and his voice is unsteady when he says, “Arthur, it wasn’t—wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

 _It was_ , Arthur thinks. _This is the end you were always leading us towards._

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” Dutch says, voice cracking, “but you leave me no choice.”

 _I gave you everything I had_ , Arthur thinks.

He’s expecting the bullet. Waiting for it, even, knows it’s a kinder end than bleeding out on this rock. He betrayed Dutch, helped John escape, killed Micah, whom Dutch still believed couldn’t possibly have ratted them out. The life he had known is gone, and maybe it’s only right that his life as a whole ended with it.

What he hears, though, is the sound of the hammer being un-cocked.

“God _damn_ it,” Dutch says, and lowers the gun. Because, of course, executing Arthur outright had never been something within Dutch’s power. As much as Dutch talks, he has that bit to him, either cowardice or compassion or maybe even cruelty that means he will never bring himself to this.

Instead, Dutch takes stumbling step forward, saying, “Arthur, I—”

But when Arthur lifts his head to look at Dutch, the man cuts himself off, and steps backward. Like Arthur’s gaze is burning him, like the weight of it is forcing him back. And when Arthur doesn’t look away, Dutch turns, then is gone. And Arthur shouldn’t be surprised, but it still aches.

There’s shouting, somewhere below the cliffs, Pinkertons still looking for them. Arthur closes his eyes.

He thinks of Charles.

Charles, with his strong shoulders and his soft eyes. Charles, with his wit and his thoughtfulness. Charles, who is good at the deepest parts of him, treating those who deserved it with incredible kindness. Always pushing, wanting goodness, insisting Arthur had something loving at his core.

Maybe, now, Arthur can bring himself to agree with him. Maybe this body, this stag, is just that, one whole spark of love, the best bits of him coming together for one last stand. Maybe he’s made himself into something that would make Charles proud.

And maybe, in the last few seconds before the darkness takes him, he imagines strong arms, lifting him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of y'all were wondering what Dutch was in this AU, and that's the truth of it. He was just a human the whole time. One entranced by the unnatural, but human all the same. I hope that feels fitting, because it seemed like the only possibility to me when writing this. Painfully human.
> 
> Next (and last!) chapter is going to be an epilogue. Hope y'all enjoy!


	8. Epilogue: Veteran's Homestead

Charles catches his first glimpse of John Marston in eight years right before a punch splits the skin over his right cheekbone open.

He’s supposed to be throwing boxing matches, getting paid for it, so it’s all well and good that he takes a hit. Plenty of folks out there would love to see a man that looks like him take his licks. The problem comes when he hits back out of instinct, the shock of seeing John again making him forget to temper his punches, and his opponent goes down.

In the uproar that follows, bets being exchanged and arguments starting, Charles feels someone grasp at his arm, John yanking him out of the mess and pulling him down an alley before anyone realizes he’s disappeared. It’s only once they’ve turned a few corners, gone far enough that most folks would lose them in the bustle of Saint Denis, that John says, “Reckon you just made a lot of folks mighty unhappy.”

“John?” Charles says, just to confirm it. The surprise is still fresh, making his head swim, and he wouldn’t be entirely shocked to find out this might be some sort of hallucination brought on by a hit to the head.

But John turns towards him, spreads his arms as he says, “In the flesh,” like this isn’t a moment Charles never expected to have.

“I thought you were dead,” Charles finds himself saying, and it’s breathier than he’d like. Sure, folks survive from impossible situations sometimes, but Charles hasn’t heard anything at all of John in the past eight years, and he’s been looking, keeping his ear to the ground. The Van der Linde gang had vanished, along with those survivors left.

“Sure,” says John, “same to you. But we ain’t, huh?”

“We ain’t,” Charles echoes back. Against all odds.

John looks good, all things considered. Eight years ago he’d been gangly, broad shouldered but with no weight to back it up. Now, days of what must be manual labor have filled out his frame, giving him the muscles to match his bones. He’s bright, too, face tan with days spent in the sun, a smile on his lips rather than the scowl that had been a near permanent fixture in those last weeks of the gang. The scars that had been still raw last Charles had seen him are now faded to white, cutting craters through his beard, which is trimmed but not clean-shaven in the sort of way of a man that doesn’t need to care about impressing—or conning—anybody.

They’ve paused just outside an alley, a busy street beside them. Riders and folks walking and the occasional carriage, and that helps to ground Charles. This is real, he thinks, John Marston is alive with a heart beating in front of him, and the thought makes warmth spread through his chest.

John claps a hand on Charles’s shoulder, and that solidifies things further. “Abigail’s alive too, and Jack, only—” John’s smile falters, here, for the first time— “only she left me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” And he is, is the thing. Even though things like potentially failing marriages are small, compared to what they’ve been through, Charles remembers how John and Abigail cared for each other, the sort of care that made them burn hot and angry, that made Abigail, specifically, push for John to better than he was often willing to convince himself he _could_ be. If they were anything still like that now, Charles can see both why Abigail may have been frustrated into leaving, and why John losing her was still a tragedy.

Somewhere in the bustling chaos of the city, a big mutt approaches them. John leans down and lets the thing sniff his palm, and, when the dog seems to decide he doesn’t smell too bad, runs his hand over its head and scratches at its ears. He doesn’t look up at Charles as he goes on. “But I’m gonna get her back. Got a place and everythin’ I been workin’ on. Well—me ‘n Uncle, but he don’t do any of the actual labor, just likes to tell me what I’m doin’ wrong.”

“A place?”

“It’s a ranch, over near Blackwater. Called Beecher’s Hope.”

Charles finds himself peering at John. “That close? Is that safe?”

John just snorts in return. “Probably not. But it was fallin’ apart, and that was the only reason I could even get a bank loan for it. Reckon it’ll need a whole new house built on the property, but I’ve been puttin’ the work in on the rest of the land. Still’s mostly rocks, but I think we could still keep a few cows, some chickens. Maybe even sheep, eventually.”

“Huh,” Charles says, looking not at John but at the dog, which has sat itself down, apparently satisfied enough with John’s petting to settle in for a while. John’s fingers scratch through the fur of its chest, and in the light this time of day, it looks nearly golden.

Finally, John looks up at Charles, and his eyes are surprisingly careful, almost guarded. And his voice, too, is careful, like he’s worried about the answer, when he asks, “So you keen on stayin’ round here or what?”

Charles shakes his head at that. “I got a place up near O’Creagh’s Run. Only come down here for the fights. Earn a little extra, between hunting.”

John’s face falls just a little, though he tries to hide it. Turns away from Charles, looks over at the dog again. “What, you got a wife and kids now?”

Between them, the dog’s tail thumps against the cobblestone of the street. Charles wants to laugh. “Not exactly. It’s mostly just me and the animals.”

“Ah,” John says, and finally stands. The dog stands as well, shakes, the movement rippling from its head down to its tail. John rubs his own arm for a moment, and is hesitant when he says, “Listen, if you ever need a place, to lay low or just friendly, we’re open to you. It would be nice to have good company that ain’t Uncle.”

Charles gets the sense that John means it too.

Eight years, and the man is welcoming, even though he has no way of knowing if Charles is still the same man he left. No way of knowing whether he’s trustworthy, whether he’s now the type of man desperate enough to rob John in his sleep for a few dollars, whether he’s fallen into the bottle or something worse.

John is lonely.

The thought comes to him suddenly, and, yet, Charles finds that it’s true, and who could blame him? Seeing a gang that had been his family for well over a decade crumble in the span of six months, everyone he’d cared about dead or scattered to the winds. Of course it would make a man lonely, even with a wife and a kid, and even more so when said wife left him. It must’ve been a relief, stumbling upon Charles in the city, knowing that there were still folks left, those that he had once cared about, and that he could get back those that he once called family.

Charles rubs the back of his neck, says, “Listen, John, I need to get moving if I’m going to get home before it gets too late. But I’ll think on it, alright? There’s some things that need taking care of, but after, I’d like to come visit. Maybe help you build that house, if things work out.”

And that, at least, brightens the man before him, something about the possibility in Charles’s words. “Right,” John says, nodding his head. “Where can I write to you?”

“I get letters at Emerald Ranch. Just send to Charles Smith. There’s enough of us that it isn’t a risk.”

“I’m under John Marston,” John says, and there’s an edge of guilt when he continues, “in Blackwater. So I’ll get letters if you write back there.”

“Sure,” Charles says.

John holds out a hand, and Charles shakes it. He wants to hug John, he thinks, but maybe that’s too much all at once. John says, “I’ll see you soon, Charles. Keep yourself safe.”

“Mm-hm,” Charles hums, “same to you.”

And he’s about to turn away then, but something sparks in his mind. He pauses, looks back at the other man. “John?”

“Hmm?” John turns towards him and his eyes, despite everything, still have that wolf-like keenness to them.

Charles holds his gaze steady, despite it. “If you’re ever up near Ambarino, see a big stag? Don’t shoot.”

* * *

There’s a warm breeze on the ride home. Charles and Falmouth are alone until the edge of Saint Denis, where the big mutt John had been petting appears beside them. Falmouth doesn’t spook, doesn’t at all react, used enough to this by now. Taima, too, even before her retirement, had settled with it.

The dog follows them through the marshy land north of the city and, when they reach the border into New Hanover, Charles urges Falmouth into a lope. It’s not long before they’re sheltered by the trees, the old, rarely used paths of the foothills, and it’s there that the dog shifts.

It happens in near an instance, but Charles finds himself impossibly awed by it every time. Mid-stride and without missing a beat, the dog’s legs lengthen, narrow. Its snout tapers, its tail shortens, its fur grows short and turns an unmistakable golden. Big, antlers covered by the soft velvet of early spring growth, but already impressive in their breadth and height, the way they taper to slender points, spring out of its head as if they were always there, as if they belong there.

He knows this stag well and, still, the sight of the thing takes his breath away, makes his pulse thrum under his skin.

They keep pace for a few hundred feet, Falmouth tossing his head in the joy of being allowed to run, Charles’s heart thumping up in his ears, and the stag covering ground in great, leaping bounds. And then the stag pulls ahead, makes a few playful leaps around Falmouth, the horse snorting but not slowing. A few more paces, a shake of the thing’s antlered head, and then the stag flicks its tail once before it springs off the road and disappears into the brush.

 _Show off_ , Charles thinks, with fondness.

* * *

Charles arrives at the small cabin on O’Creagh’s Run as the sun is starting to set. He feeds Falmouth, turns him out with Taima, and enters a cabin that smells suspiciously of cooking dinner. He barely manages to sit down to unlace his boots before there are arms resting on his shoulders, and the warmth of a broad chest settles against the back of his head. “I shoulda bit him,” the voice comes from above him, and the laughter is clear in Arthur’s voice.

Charles leans back in the chair, lets Arthur rest his head on top of Charles’s own. “Should’ve known you’d beat me here,” he says, even though he’d known that was the case since he’d gotten in and seen Taima already fed.

“Falmouth ain’t a deer,” Arthur replies. “Only so fast you can go usin’ roads.”

“You really telling me you weren’t trying to get me to race you?”

Arthur snorts, twines his arms so they’re crossed over Charles’s chest, that same need for touch he always has when he’s in his human form. “I would never,” he says, voice laden with exaggerated sincerity. “Can’t believe you would think that of me when all I wanted was t’make you some dinner.”

Charles snorts, though he can’t help the fond smile creeping onto his face. “You’re the one saying you should’ve bit John. Think you’re bringing it on yourself.”

Charles had left the Wapiti reservation not long after Arthur did. It couldn’t have been more than a day, enough to get Eagle Flies stabilized after his lower leg had been removed. It had been a growing sense of dread that had gotten him moving, something about how Arthur had been that last time they’d seen each other, along with Rains Fall’s blessing to do what he needed to. And thank whatever higher power was out there that he did, because he’d arrived to the tail end of the chaos that had engulfed Beaver Hollow and the end of the gang. When he’d followed the trail of the fighting and found the stag bleeding out at the top of the mountain along with the cooling body of Micah Bell, he’d known immediately the deer was Arthur.

Luckily, he’d had plenty of experience lugging around deer on Taima’s rump. It was a tense ride back to the reservation and an even tenser period of recovery, Charles not particularly familiar with treating a deer and Arthur not particularly used to living as one. They accompanied the Wapiti north, Arthur resting in one of their wagons more often than not, his body still healing from the trauma of the past few months.

For a while, Charles’d wondered what there was left of Arthur. If the deer had taken over the man’s brain, erased what used to be. It seemed to be a permanent transformation at the time, after all, and maybe what made Arthur who he was, his thoughts and memories, would begin to fade.

He got his answer when Arthur was first able to stay awake long enough to figure out how to scratch letters in the dirt with his hooves. Charles had gone to check on Arthur only to find him standing over the word JOHN written in the dusty soil. Arthur had looked at Charles and started tapping at the name insistently, huffing air frustratedly out his nose when Charles didn’t seem to understand what he was asking. It was only when Charles told Arthur he hadn’t heard anything of John, nothing in the papers about his capture, that Arthur settled and Charles understood.

Still making sure those he cared about got out safely, as best he could with the information they had. Still Arthur even if the body was different.

Charles didn’t think he’d ever seen a deer glare before, but Arthur sure got good enough at it. As much as Arthur couldn’t talk, he would let Charles know if and when he had a problem. If Arthur wanted to communicate, he would find a way to. That was the long and short of it, the determination that was so central to everything Arthur had ever said or done. Arthur was stubborn down to his core, and it was the stubbornness that led to him regaining the shapeshifting that lay at his insides. 

It was a Wapiti dog, at first. One that had grown fond of Arthur, not particularly sure what to do with the stag wandering around their temporary camps between stretches of travel, but eventually settling on a friend. Arthur learned soon enough that the dog found it a wonderful game when Arthur used his antlers to fling things around for her to fetch, and the dog often nipped at Arthur’s heels in the same way she might with another dog.

Charles had witnessed it by chance. He’d been wanting to give Arthur his dinner for a while, but watching Arthur play with the dog and a couple kids had given him pause enough to delay him. With how much hurt Arthur had gone through, physical and emotional, something warm sparked in his chest to see him carefree, pain free, even if it was in the body of a deer.

But then, Arthur had paused, a shudder passing through his body. And worry had sparked in Charles’s chest, enough to make him almost drop the plate of food in his hand, rush over to where Arthur stood frozen.

It wasn’t needed, though. Not when Arthur took one more look at the camp dog, and then his limbs started shrinking. Slow, at first, not like the rapid changes Charles had remembered, but then faster, like remembering the steps of an old habit. Arthur’s fur growing longer, snout widening, tail lengthening, quicker and quicker until, in what felt like an instant, suddenly there were two nearly identical camp dogs standing there in the mess of kids.

And then the second dog picked up its head and looked straight over at Charles, and Charles knew immediately what the look in Arthur’s eyes was saying. He’d found it again. The bit of him that let him change his shape.

And it didn’t stop at the dog, either—any animal roughly around his size that Arthur could get a good look at, Charles would eventually find him wandering around as. Regaining his catalogue of shapes, maybe, the various forms that allowed Arthur his freedom.

The stag was the center, though, always. The form he always returned to.

Not long after, a week or so before they were set to cross over into Canada, Rains Fall pulled Charles aside and told him, point blank, that it was alright for him and Arthur to move on. That they were welcome to stay, of course, as long as they needed, but with Eagle Flies starting to recover, maybe it was time for them to find their own happiness. Charles had protested, not wanting to leave the tribe at risk. However, he found he couldn’t argue when Rains Fall put a hand on his shoulder and said, firmly, “You have a place here, if you want it. But I don’t believe it would be the place that would make you happiest.”

It was Arthur that picked the place. Indicating on maps, both purchased and hand-drawn from Charles’s memory, until Charles narrowed down the location he meant to a lake in Ambarino called O’Creagh’s Run, and then further to a structure on the shores. When he shot Arthur a questioning look, Arthur had spelled out FRIEND, and then, DIED.

It wasn’t much to go on, but Charles trusted Arthur then the same as he trusts him now. And when they arrived in Ambarino to find an empty cabin, not abandoned long enough to be falling apart and complete with a paddock out back for Taima, Charles wasn’t surprised that it was the perfect fit for them.

He would learn, later, that the man who owned the cabin had been an old war veteran turned to hunting after the war left him one leg down. Briefly a hunter of werewolves and other shapeshifting beasts, in fact, until he became disillusioned with the idea of killing things that just seemed to want to live peaceful lives. It was maybe not a surprise, then, that Arthur had taken to him. He’d also learn that the man was buried not far from the cabin, and Arthur had been the one to bury him after a hunting trip gone wrong.

They made it home, as best they could, a safe haven. Somewhere they could live, and somewhere the relationship between them could grow. And maybe it was predictable, that the first time he and Arthur kissed was the first day they’d discovered Arthur could turn human again.

Not long after they had arrived at the cabin, Charles had spent the afternoon chopping wood, alone. Arthur had wandered off, seemingly preoccupied with something on his mind. It had happened like that sometimes, Arthur’s mind caught up with something he couldn’t adequately express without the mouth to speak it.

Charles had thought he’d gone up to Hamish’s grave, as Arthur often did in those moments, sheltered enough as it was to protect him from the risk of hunters. So, when Charles entered the house to see a naked man standing on the other side of the room, his hand had snapped to the gun on his belt as an automatic reflex, up until it rocked through him just who it was.

Arthur. Arthur, human. Human, as he hadn’t been for near over a year, since everything had crumbled and begun anew.

Charles doesn’t remember now, crossing the cabin, but he supposes he must’ve, seeing as he interrupted Arthur saying, “Charles, I—” by kissing him. It was almost uncontrollable, something like a year’s worth of want, ever since that moment on the Wapiti reservation when Charles had realized just what Arthur meant to him. That unspoken thing between them, the thing that couldn’t flower in the circumstances, but now had a chance to.

Arthur had been so surprised he’d lost the tenuous grip on his human form and had turned back into a stag right then and there. And then, when Charles had laughed, Arthur was annoyed enough to start knocking every single pillow and blanket off their bed and couch with his antlers. It had ended, perhaps predictably, with blankets wrapped around Arthur’s antlers and Charles snickering under his breath as he untangled them, Arthur huffing frustrated sighs at him as he did. All indignant anger, but Charles had been stuck with the feeling of Arthur’s lips on his, and had loved Arthur for it anyway.

It took time, years of it, for Arthur to build up the endurance to inhabit for any significant period of time the human shape that had been his base for the large majority of his life. But now—

“Can’t believe that goddamn idiot,” Arthur says now, from his position leaning against the back of Charles’s chair. “Drivin’ Abigail away. I’m gonna goddamn kill him.”

“You trying to tell me your tail wasn’t wagging?” Charles says, tugging one of his boots off his foot, laying it on the floor next to the chair, seeing as Arthur doesn’t seem inclined to let him go enough for him to put it next to the front door.

“Shut it,” Arthur snaps back, but not with enough bitterness for it to be genuine.

Charles leans back, tilts his head back. He can only see a bit of Arthur’s face like this, but it’s enough. “Do you want to go down? To Beecher’s Hope?”

There’s only a rumble of a hum, one Charles can feel where Arthur’s throat rests against his hair.

He’s not surprised, really. As much as Charles knows Arthur missed John, it had been a shock enough to his system to learn John was alive, let alone Arthur’s. They’d assumed, after all this time with no word, that John had died. It was a bitter thought, sure, and one Arthur refused to even put words to, but a realistic one, with the life they had led. It would be more likely than not that someone had caught up to John, be it Dutch or the Pinkertons, or that John had been unable to turn from robbing folks, no matter what Arthur had told him about getting out of the life.

But, against all odds, John is alive. Alive, and out of the life, even, trying to set up as a rancher somewhere. The relief of it must be staggering, and Charles doesn’t blame Arthur for the time he might need to process that, before they decide if they’re going to make the trip.

As the silence falls back over them, Arthur’s touches are more insistent now, Arthur already starved for contact in the same way he always is when he's human. The shock of John on top of it likely doesn’t help, and eventually they become so much so that Charles finds himself asking, “Bed?”

“Ain’t got enough for that,” Arthur says, and the regret tinges his voice.

It takes energy for Arthur to stay as a human, and, as such, he is limited in how long he can maintain it. At first, he’d needed all his concentration to just stay in the form but, luckily, practice has built up his tolerance. They don’t know for sure why this form is different, needs so much more work to keep up, though Charles supposes it has something to do with it being borrowed from a memory, rather than something real.

Either way, though Arthur’s endurance for it has increased, and keeping his shape instead of slipping back into the stag is a habit that often fades into the back of his mind in the same way breathing does, multiple transformations in a day still drain him quickly, as do long journeys on foot—or, really, on hooves.

“No one made you come,” Charles murmurs, though it’s more sympathetic than chastising. Though he never makes Arthur come down to Saint Denis to watch him fight, he knows Arthur would never be content to sit in the cabin while Charles did anything that had the potential to hurt him.

Plus, as Arthur says next, “Wouldn’t’a seen John if I stayed here.” There’s a tone in his voice, something fond and pained all wrapped up in one.

Charles doesn’t say it. Doesn’t acknowledge that Arthur missed John, that it had been a long eight years thinking they were the only ones left, that his brother had meant just as much to Arthur as Charles does. That there was still a soft, wounded part in Arthur’s heart, and he likely would trade anything at all for the chance to see John again, for that part of him to start healing.

Instead, Charles just suggests it’s just about time to eat dinner.

They don’t eat meat much anymore, and, when they do, it tends to be fish or fowl. Red meat doesn’t settle well in Arthur’s stomach, likely a side effect of being an herbivore the majority of his time. It’s easier, to stick to a deer-like diet, when Arthur’s human shape doesn’t really mean he’s human.

This form is Arthur as he was as a human, and it isn’t. As far as Charles can figure, it’s Arthur as he remembers himself. As he remembered his body feeling, or what he saw when he looked in a mirror, though without the judgement of it. A photographic comparison between Arthur then and Arthur now would look identical, except for tiny little things one would only notice when one looked close.

He never gains weight, for instance. His hair doesn’t grow, and neither does his beard. He doesn’t tan in the sun, no matter how many summer days he and Charles have spent outside caring for their little cabin. Despite eight years between the fall of the gang and now, seven years of it where he was able to turn human, he hasn’t grown any grey hairs, any new wrinkles.

Charles doesn’t bring it up. He knows why it is, of course, and it isn’t worth tossing into the air. Arthur’s true body is the stag, now. It’s the stag that will grow and shed antlers, that will bleach out in the sun, that will eventually grow grey hairs around its muzzle. Even the scars that do carry over are a reflection of the deer body, not his human one.

But, Arthur is alive. And he can speak, and he can read, and he can laugh, all brightness and light. He can hum to himself when he’s doing chores, spreading hay for Taima and Falmouth or washing the dishes. He can sketch in his journal, picture after picture of their life here together, and the joy that brings him can only bring Charles joy in return.

They can lay together at night, so long as Arthur’s endurance to hold out his human form lasts. Charles knows this body is different from how Arthur’s body was before only because he is intimately familiar with it now. They can know each other, in soft ways and hard, better than anyone else on Earth might hope to.

And they can lay here now, dinner finished and the dishes pilled near the sink to wash later and Arthur’s head tucked up under Charles’s chin, their legs intertwined.

Arthur can say, laughter in his voice, “Can’t wait to see his face when he goddamn realizes.”

Charles snorts back. Even though he only was in the gang for a year, he’d had enough of a taste of John’s anger in overheard arguments at camp, and he knows what the man’s reaction is likely going to be. “He’s probably going to punch you.”

Arthur’s voice is a touch indignant when it comes, “He ain’t gonna dare. Not when he knows what I’m gonna do to him for the Abigail thing.”

Charles laughs, the sound coming from somewhere deep in his chest, and then Arthur is kissing him, long and slow and sweet. Not anything leading to more, but just the casual intimacy they’re allowed now, the time to exist without desperation. Lazy, unrushed. Happy.

It’s a long while before they break apart, and Arthur rests his forehead against Charles’s. His breath comes deep and heavy, in through lips parted and flushed. “Got him out,” Arthur murmurs, and it has shakiness at its edges. Almost fragile, like it might stop being real if Arthur puts voice to it.

“You did,” Charles confirms, because, though he knows Arthur is the reason John is out of the life, buying a goddamn ranch and all, has known it even before John’s survival was confirmed, he’s not the one that needs so badly to let himself believe it.

Later, Charles will wake next to a great furred beast, Arthur’s last reserves of energy spent up and the stag returned, and will roll to the other side of the bed to avoid catching an eye on Arthur’s antlers. After a few sleepy hours in bed until the sun has fully risen, he’ll start packing up the horses without Arthur ever saying outright that he wants to visit Beecher’s Hope, knowing, in that spot inside him, that no other reality is possible. That Arthur will want to see his brother, and that Arthur _deserves_ to see John, Abigail, Jack, the lives he saved.

Now, though, Charles drapes his arm over Arthur’s side, breathes deep. Hears the steadiness of it, his breathing and Arthur’s, and knows he wouldn’t trade this for anything in the whole world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s an alternate version of this world I considered where Arthur becomes a stag permanently, with no more shapeshifting period, let alone into a human. I ultimately decided I couldn’t do that to Charles. This fic is tagged Charthur, and so they deserve to have an actual relationship, rather than the mutual pining that was happening in previous chapters. So that’s why I went the way I did.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! I’ve had this AU kicking around in my head for what must be a year now, so it was a joy to be able to finally put it on the page.

**Author's Note:**

> Updates every Tuesday. You can find me at [werewolfsquadron](http://werewolfsquadron.tumblr.com) on tumblr. If you enjoyed, let me know!


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